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^ lEngU^t) Iiutotruetion ^ 

V* TO THE V* 

P CHRISTA SAWGITA. * 



sft^tfrffaT 



iSufliisi) Entroiriutton 



• / 



CHRISTA-SANGITA 



SACRED HISTORY 



OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, 



IN SANSCRIT VERSE, 



■ 



I. THE INFANCY. III. THE LATER MINISTRY. 

IT. THE EARLIER MINISTRY. IV. THE PASSION & GLORIFICATION. 



CALCUTTA : 

BISHOP'S COLLEGE PRESS. 
1842. 



PREFACE. 



To give to the historical truths of Christianity a dress bor- 
rowed from the metrical legends of the Hindus is no novel 
idea; but the attempt to do this without violating, either 
in the facts or the spirit of the narrative, the chaste sim- 
plicity of Scripture, may have greater pretensions to originality. 
Such is the present undertaking : for which the plain style and 
easy versification of the standard Sanscrit mythological epics 
of Vyasa and Valmiki afford far greater facilities than are 
presented by the vernacular Muses of Southern India, in whose 
most meretricious forms the same sacred history has been be- 
fore conveyed, but with singular adulteration, by the genius 
of the Jesuit Father Beschi.* 

The style of these mythological poems has been indeed before 
attempted by Christian imitators for a different purpose,— but 
one to which, from Indian usage, it is equally well adapted, 
as the celebrated episode of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad 
Gita, may suffice to shew,— -that of conveying moral or me- 
taphysical instruction in the form of dialogue. The attempt 
in this manner to restore the great truths of natural religion 
which the Brahmanical system has obscured or depraved ; to 
refute by arguments drawn from themselves the polytheistic 



* Of the great Tamil work of this extraordinary author, entitled Tembavani, 
or, The Unfading Garland, recounting the early history of our Lord, some 
description may be seen in the preface to Mr. Babington's translation of the 
Adventures of the Gooroo Paramarthan, (a work ascribed to the same author,) 
in Hough's Answer to the Abbe Dubois, and in Hoole's Journey to Southern 
India. 



//■ft. 



IV 



and pantheistic systems, to which the vulgar and the sage are 
severally addicted, is a work strictly within the province of a 
Christian instructor; and, if executed with as much of good 
faith as of spirit and ability, would have reflected undoubted 
honour on that celebrated Society from which the project 
originated. But when, as if to defeat the success of the design 
with all Heathens of knowledge and integrity, we see the 
names of Narada, Jaimini, and other venerated teachers of 
Brahmanic theology, introduced as refuting and denouncing 
it, and the name of the most ancient and sacred of all Hindu 
writings, prefixed as the real title of the composition, (though 
the Vedic style is widely different from that of the Puranas 
in which these pretended Vedas are written,) no skill in the 
execution can screen from censure the authors and abettors of 
a forgery equally disingenuous and imprudent. The work, of 
which the part containing the false Yajur-Veda in a loose 
French translation, was printed at Yverdon in 1778, imposed 
on some* even of real sagacity in Europe, where an eagerness 



* Particularly on the editor, the able antiquary the Baron de Ste Croix, whose 
delusion is more to be wondered at than Voltaire's, who introduced the MS. to 
the French King's library. That Anquetil du Perron should have been among 
those imposed upon by this work, is yet more extraordinary : for notwithstand- 
ing his garrulity and want of judgment, he certainly differed from the others 
in possessing some knowledge of the genuine Vedas, though only through the 
awkward and often mistaken medium of a Persian translation. His Upanishad, 
or (as the Persian translation has barbarously rendered the usual pronunciation 
of that word in Upper Hindustan) Oupnekhat, published at Strasburg in 1801, 
in two volumes, 4to. has long been the only considerable specimen of the 
preceptive part of the Vedas that is accessible to European readers. Even 
there (Pref. p. xviii.) the Ezour Vedam is spoken of as genuine. 

The following are the remarks of an Indian Missionary of the forger's own 
communion, though not of his religious order, (F. Paulin a S. Bartholomaeo in 
his Systema Brahmanicum, p. 315,) on the subject of this singular work. 
" Ezour-Vedam nobile Voltairii donum, quod in Bibliothecam Regiam 
Parisinam irrepsit, seu potius quod Voltairius obtrusit, ut Inde philosophicae 
suae moli superirnponendae basim haberet, Codex est Manuscriptus cujusdam 
Missionarii Indici in Masulipatam in ore Coromandelico contra gentiles exaratus> 
in quo religionem Paganam Indicam refellit, qui ut sub mentito nomine a 



to see the genuine Vedas had before been strongly expressed 
by IMosheim and others.* But strong suspicions of its genu- 
ineness had b£en excited, even before the discovery of the 
MSS. of the original forgery, formerly belonging to the Jesuits' 
College at Pondicherry, which is the subject of Mr. Ellis's 
satisfactory dissertation in the 14th Volume of the Asiatic 
Researches. 



gentilibus avidius legeretur, et ii per lectionem illius conf under entur, eum 
Ezour Vbdam inscripsit. Vide Sonnerat, torn. 2, lib. 3, pag. 41." In the 
censure which this able Carmelite proceeds to pass on the absence of all critical 
judgment here displayed by the philosopher of Ferney, and the easy credulity 
of those on whom he could impose such a composition for the second Veda 
of the Brahmanical theology, — no intelligent reader can fail to concur as well 
deserved. But it is singular, that amidst so much virtuous indignation at these 
attempts to delude the European public, he should so entirely forget the con- 
fessed falsehood of his brother missionary, in practising precisely the same 
imposition on the Hindus. 

* Hist. Ecc. book 1. part ii. ch. 1. §. 3. — also §. 25, of his Dissertation on 
the Pagan Ideas of Creation, in vol, ii. p. 333, of his translation of Cudworth's 
Intellectual System. 

Whether Mr. Ellis is right in separating the composition from the forgery 
of these Pseudo-Vedas, and assigning the former only, on the view of his high 
character, to the celebrated nephew of Bellarmine, Robertus de Nobilibus, to 
whom their entire composition is ascribed by the Christians of Southern India, 
may admit of considerable question. I am disposed with him to ascribe the 
blundering part of the imposture ; viz. the ascription of the title of Veda, to the 
more modern copyist, whose diversity from Robert de Nobilibus is completely 
demonstrated from the circumstances which Mr. Ellis has brought to light, — 
(the mode of exhibiting Sanscrit words in the MS. e. g. Okioro, Zoimeni, 
Bedo, &c. for TUxrf^ gj fcffiT ofS" &c. being such as could only proceed 
from one who had learnt the language from the Pandits of the province of Ben- 
gal, which was certainly not the case with the founder of the Madhura Mis- 
sion). — But it would be difficult to exempt from all share in the forgery, him 
who puts Christian, or at least Anti-Vedic sentiments into the mouth of Atri, 
Narada, Jaimini, &c. a mendacious assumption of their names (as F. Paulin 
would not scruple to call it) in order to gain Hindu readers, which enters into 
the whole texture of the original composition. And whoever will study the 
history of the Society of Jesus — not from the narration of enemies, but from 
their friends or themselves, — will see amidst the numerous contradictions it 



VI 

The poem of which the first Book is here published, is as far 
from claiming kindred with the Brahmanical assumption of the 
last-mentioned composition, which it resembles in language, as 
with the Hindu embellishments of the former, which it resembles 
in its subject ; but it has in one sense a more decided Indian 
origin than either ; its first projector being neither Jesuit nor 
Missionary, but an unconverted Gentite Pandit, Ramachandra 
Valyabhushana, of Burdwan. The curiosity of this Brahman 
had been some time before excited by the perusal of the Gospels 



presents, abundant reason to distrust the validity of any argument, which 
would infer from the possession of extraordinary virtues, of real piety however 
debased by superstition, and the most disinterested benevolence and probity in 
all secular concerns, that such a forgery for a purpose deemed pious would be 
therefore inadmissible. 

As it should seem from vol. xiv. p. 62, of the Jesuits' Letters, that no one of 
their number after Robert de Nobilibus was sufficiently versed in Sanscrit to 
have composed these papers, it becomes of less consequence to inquire who was 
their transcriber at Masulipatam or elsewhere, who gave them their Bengalese 
interlineations, and perhaps their Vedic titles also. The history of the Jesuits 
in India presents us with more than one instance of missionaries who acquired 
their knowledge of Brahmanical literature in this province. One Piere Mar- 
tin, whose letter from Balassore in the year 1699 occurs in the 10th volume of 
the Lettres Edifiantes, tells us, that after five months' assiduous application 
to the Bengali, he disguised himself as a Brahman, and in that character com- 
menced studying the Shastras as a Brahmachari or Sanscrit student in a cele- 
brated Brahman University, (at Nuddea doubtless,) until the insurrection of 
Subha Sinh against the government of Aureng Zeib compelled him to retreat 
thence to Orissa; after which we hear of him frequently in the same collec- 
tion, as a most zealous and active missionary in the Southern Provinces (Je 
m'appliquai serieusement a apprendre la langue Bengale. Au bout de cinq. 
mois je me trouvai asses habile pour me diguiser et me Jeter da>is unefa- 
meuse University de Brames. Comme nous n'avons eu jus'qa present que de 
fort legeres connoissances de leur Religion, nos Peres souhaitoient que j'y 
demeurasse deux ou trois ans pour pouvoir m'en instruire a. fond. J'en avois 
pris la resolution et j'etois pr6t a l'executer, lorsque, &c. &c. &c). Other 
instances might doubtless be found in the subsequent history of these Roman 
Sannyassies (as the Jesuit Fathers were usually called in India,) at a date 
more approaching that of the MSS. of this forgery, were the subject thought 
worthy of closer investigation. 






Vll 

of St. Matthew and St. John in his own vernacular Bengali 
idiom. From this he was led, while at Bishop's College, to con- 
ceive the design of making, in his own words, a Purana of this 
history, by a metrical translation of it into the sacred language 
of his tribe : and conceiving, from a version of the Command- 
ments and Creeds which I had some time before executed in 
the same style of Sanscrit versification, that I would approve 
and support his undertaking, he brought the introductory canto, 
which he had composed from St. John's first chapter, with a 
request that I would assist him to continue it. The perusal of 
these verses, (of which an account will be subjoined hereafter,) 
the ingenious production of one who yet frankly avowed himself 
a Hindu in religion, was calculated to excite more surprise than 
pleasure, and yet more of hope than of any other feeling. I 
encouraged him in the strongest manner to persevere in the 
work he had commenced, though my voyage to England very 
soon after this time, in August 1828, precluded any active 
assistance on my part. 

On my return to India at the close of the following year, 
Ramachandra had not contributed any thing beyond this 
introductory canto ; except about ten slockas or distichs from 
St. Matthew's Naccount of the ativity, which want of direction 
and assistance induced him soon to desist from continuing. 
These verses (some of which are inserted in the sixth canto of 
the present volume) evinced their author to be less successful in 
the historical than in the didactic part of his work, which 
he had borrowed from the sublime preface of St. John. Beside 
his unacquaintance with the more complete narration of these 
events in St. Luke, he had adhered (by a mistake very usual 
with Asiatic scholars, to whom the true nature of translation 
is entirely unknown) to a mode of representing the facts con- 
tained in his version of the first Evangelist, that destroyed all 
free use of the Puranic stanza he had adopted : the sense, in- 
stead of being tersely rounded, and completed at the close of 
almost every period of the measure, after the usual style of the 



VI 11 



Ramayana and Mahabharata, was drawn out from one distich 
to another, and irregularly terminated in the midst of them, in 
a manner of which his own writings afforded few examples, 
and which only the Bengali sources of his composition caused 
him to tolerate, or even readily to understand. He evidently 
needed more to guide him to the spirit of the original narrative, 
than the versions in his possession supplied ; and I soon found, 
with his assistance, that the same passages of the Evangelists 
were capable, with no more departure from the literal construc- 
tion, and with far less from their real style and manner, of such 
an adaptation to the genuine Puranic stanza as was satisfactory 
to himself and other native scholars. From this time, agreeably 
to his first request, I took the direction of the work, not only in 
the selection and supply of the materials, but in their Sanscrit 
rendering also, using in this occasionally the aid of other Pan- 
dits beside Ramachandra. The approbation of Bishop Turner 
and the other members of our College Syndicate being obtained 
to the undertaking, the work was pursued in the second and 
subsequent cantos on the plan which I will now more fully ex- 
plain, and which, in respect of the citation of prophecies, &c. 
enlarged upon me as the work proceeded. 

The first-mentioned canto, which differs from the rest in 
being, with two very slight exceptions, the unaided production 
of Ramachandra, opens with a question of a disciple to a Guru, 
or religious teacher, respecting the means of deliverance from the 
universal prevalence of sin. The question, delivered in the 
quasi-Alcaic undecasyllable measure entitled Indra-vajra, is 
answered by the instructor in the ordinary iambic tetrameter 
of the Puranas. He directs his inquirer to Christ the Son of 
God, as the only deliverer from the power of sin. The disciple 
inquiring who is Christ, and how he is thus identified with the 
eternal Deity, is commanded by the Guru to hear the divinely- 
revealed account of this mystery. Then opening with the de- 
claration " In the beginning was the Word," the Sage de- 
scribes with St. John, but more paraphrastically, the co-eternity 



IX 



and consubstantiality of the Divine Word with the Father: 
the eternal communication of all Divine attributes to this only- 
begotten Son of God, and Light of Light, in full and undivided 
perfection ; his participation in the creation of the universe, as 
the expressed intelligence, the power, and the wisdom of God. 
He concludes with stating, that he, the true image of the 
invisible God, " without whom nothing was made, that was 
made," yet descended to reveal Him afresh to his creatures, lost 
by sin ; that this Divine Word became man, that he might reunite 
man to God. The actual history of this Incarnation, and how 
the true Light shone uncomprehended in the darkness of his 
own world, he now proposes to inform the yet uninstructed 
disciple. And this announcement of the coming history con- 
cludes the singular composition of the Burdwan Pandit, 
entitled Sabda- Avatar a adhydya, or Canto of the Word's 
Incarnation.* 



* Several verses in this Sanscrit paraphrase of St. John (which I have 
considerably modified and expanded in the second edition), might recal to 
the memory of the classical and ecclesiastical reader the paraphrase of the 
same Gospel made in the fourth century by an Egyptian writer, Nonnus of 
Panopolis, who is also remarkable for having before, when a heathen, applied 
that style of writing to its usual purpose, of celebrating the conquests of 
Bacchus, and especially that of India: (his Dionysiacs exhibiting in several 
parts a singular compound of Brahmanical legends on the wars of Curu and 
Pandu, heard probably in Syria or Persia, with the mythology of Greece). 
The paraphrase of St. John begins with 

' Ay^povoq r\v, a.Kiyj)TOQ, cv appr^TU) A0T02 af>X#> 
IcrotyvriQ yeverripog ojutiXikoq, vioq ajurjTiop, 
Kat Ao-yog avrotyvTOio 0£ov, (fxog £/c (jxxsog <j>(*)Q. 
Tlarpoq trjv apkpiaroq, arepp.ovi avvBpovoq t^py, 

Keu Geoc vipiysvtdXoq £»jv Aoyoq. 

(the first three lines being but the rendering of St. John's words, EN 
APXH HN O A0r02, and the remainder of the first verse only 
being rendered by the two last.) 



The history opens in the second canto with the statement, 
that in the reign of Augustus, Emperor of Rome, in a general 
peace of the world, fifty years from the commencement of the 
great Indian era of Vicramaditya, the angel Gabriel was com- 
missioned to deliver the message of the Incarnation to the bles- 
sed Virgin of Nazareth in Galilee. The events are then told 
exactly as in the first chapter of St. Luke, from ver. 26 — 45, 
with no greater deviation from the words of the original than 
would be required for a prose translation in any Asiatic lan- 
guage. The hymn Magnificat, ver. 46 — 55, is afterwards, 
agreeably to the style, as well of the original as of the Pura- 
nas, distinguished from the ordinary narration by a lyric 
measure, of stricter versification than the loose iambic of the 
dialogue: but even here, such is the flexibility of the Sans- 
crit, that the expressions of the original are with scarcely any 
variation retained throughout. This concluded, it is merely 
said, that after Mary's departure from the house of Zacharias 
and Elisabeth, the promised eminent child was born to her aged 
cousin. And thus ends the Dhanya-namaskara adhyaya, or 
Canto of the Annunciation, (lit. " Blessed Salutation.") 

The disciple then naturally inquires who was this eminent 
child, who leaped in the womb at the approach of the mother 
of his Lord, and of whom the angel also made mention before to 
Mary : was he too an Avatar or Incarnation of Deity, resem- 
bling him with whose nativity his own is so remarkably con- 
nected ? The teacher answers, that no such incarnation in 
which the Divine Word was necessarily unaccompanied and 
unrivalled, distinguished the conception and birth of John ; 
" he was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that 
Light;" he was "of the earth" — a man, like others, of earthly 
origin, commissioned by God for that special purpose ; accord- 
ingly as the subject of this nativity was different, so was the 
nativity itself, not like that of Jesus, effected without the inter- 
vention of an earthly father, however in its circumstances 
extraordinary and miraculous. To prove this, he recounts the 



XI 



particulars of Zacharias' vision in the temple, as told in the 
former part of St. Luke's first chapter, ver. 5 — 25 : then merely 
glancing at the circumstances already related, he pursues the 
history of the forerunner's birth as contained from ver. 57 to the 
end, distinguishing only the Benedictus or hymn of Zacharias 
by a lyric dodecasyllable measure ; aiming to exhibit the style 
and even the expressions of the original, as far as the very different 
idiom of the Sanscrit will permit. With the facts of Luke i. 80, 
told in the ordinary measure, this third canto of John's nativity 
is concluded. 

Hitherto all Jewish allusions to the names of the ancient 
patriarchs, prophets, &c, had remained unexplained, as they 
stand in the page of the Evangelist ; the spirit of the narration 
could not have been otherwise preserved, amidst the perpetual 
questions of the Indian disciple. But now, after the song of 
Zacharias, the disciple's curiosity is excited to the points with- 
out which the following history must be often unintelligible. 
He asks who is the David alluded to in that song, and in the 
angelic annunciation to the Virgin, as the king whose throne 
the child Jesus was to inherit ; who is the Aaron described as 
the ancestor of John ; who is Abraham, the common father of the 
whole nation ; and what the sworn promise of God to him, that 
was to be realized in the coming deliverer ? The preceptor an- 
swers, that to detail these particulars as they are contained in 
the ancient Scriptures would be impossible ; he can but recite 
them very compendiously for his pupil's information. Begin- 
ning therefore with Abraham's call from the idolatrous land of 
the Chaldeans to a country he knew not, and the magnificent 
promise annexed, as given in Gen. xii. 1 — 3, he recounts brief- 
ly the ready obedience of the father of the faithful, his sojourn in 
Canaan, the birth of Isaac, and the transmission of the promise 
through him to his younger son, of whom are the twelve tribes of 
Israel : these patriarchs dwelling as strangers in that land of 
promise of which their descendants were the destined possessors. 
The scholar inquiring how was that promise then fulfilled, 

c 



Xll 

is succinctly informed of Joseph's servitude and promotion in 
Egypt, the subsequent emigration thither of Jacob and all his 
family, until "another king arose, who knew not Joseph ;" the 
raising up of a deliverer in the person of Moses ; the wonders 
which God wrought by his and Aaron's instrumentality in 
Egypt ; the deliverance of Israel from the house of bondage ; the 
forty years' wandering in the desert, with the revelation of the 
Divine Law from Sinai, and the gradual extinction of that per- 
verse generation ; ending with the death of Moses, and the 
subsequent conquest of Canaan by Joshua, or Jesus his succes- 
sor. The disciple now asking whether the promise to Abraham 
was not fully accomplished by this instatement in the promised 
land, is told, that a " rest yet remained for the people of God" 
and faithful heirs of the promise, beyond that which the con- 
quests of this first Jesus could secure to them : he is then 
rapidly informed (agreeably to the 78th Psalm) of the varying 
history of the chosen people in Canaan, according as they were 
faithful or disobedient ; their successive captivities and deli- 
verances under the Judges, until the period when the ark of the 
covenant, withdrawn from the tabernacle at Shiloh in the ter- 
ritory of Ephraim, became the spoil of the Philistine idolaters, 
whose idol deity fell prostrate in his own temple before it. 
Then comes the rule of Samuel, and the people's desire of a 
king ; the unction of Saul, his rejection, and the election from 
the tribe of Judah of the man after God's own heart, who brings 
the ark at length from exile, and fixes it on the holy mount of 
Sion, and ensures by entire conquest the tranquil possession 
of Palestine to the children of Israel. With the great promise of 
God to David, therefore, as contained in 2 Sam. vii. 8 — 16, 
(and more paraphrastically in Ps. lxxxix. 21 — 36,) but abridg- 
ed, and made prominent from the rest of the narration by 
the same poetical measure with which the work began, this 
canto concludes, which is entitled Paitrika-Samvid, or the 
Promise to the Fathers. 

The disciple then acknowledges his queries to be satisfied ; 



Xlll 



but yet he wishes to be informed how the conditional part of 
the remarkable promise just quoted was answered in the sub- 
sequent fortunes of David's offspring, during the 1050 years 
that intervened, as he was told, between this and the period 
of the history. The instructor commences his reply by observ- 
ing, that the eventual and unconditional part of the promise 
points to one great object of faithful expectation, termed emi- 
nently the Messiah or Chrtst : while the immediate descend- 
ants of David in the unction of royalty, in strict accordance 
with the conditional part of the covenant, soon paid the forfeit 
of their unhappy degeneracy and transgression, by chastisement 
and loss of empire. The peaceful reign of Solomon is rapidly 
told ; the erection of the first great temple by him ; his subse- 
quent idolatry ; and the defection of ten tribes of the twelve 
from his house in the person of his foolish son. The general 
apostacy of these ten tribes from the true worship of God at 
Jerusalem is then mentioned ; their more heinous idolatries in 
after times, which the labours of Elijah (already mentioned in 
the third canto) and of his follower Elisha, were unable to ex- 
tirpate ; ending with their captivity and unreclaimed dispersion 
in the lands of the Assyrian conqueror. The disciple then 
asking whether the princes of David's house ruling over the two 
tribes, resembled in character those apostate monarchs of Israel, 
is briefly told of the various characters and fortunes of the kings 
of Judah from Rehoboam to the captive Jeconiah and his uncle 
and successor, in whose time the city and temple are sacked and 
destroyed by the Babylonians. The disciple again asking what 
became of the fallen house of David, and of the Jewish people, 
during the six centuries yet remaining, the instructor relates the 
return from captivity on Cyrus' edict, the building of the second 
temple, with the successive conditions of the people under the 
Persian and Macedonian monarchies (noticing also some syn- 
chronisms of Indian history.) Their revolt from Antiochus 
Epiphanes, and other idolatrous persecutors, under the Macca- 
bean heroes, is then related in the same concise manner ; as also 



xiv 

the sacerdotal rule of their Asmonsean successors, until the con- 
quest of Jerusalem by Pompey ; and lastly the elevation of He- 
rod the Great, the tributary king, in whose reign the events of 
this history began. A rapid but comprehensive description of 
the evils of Israel at this time, the alien rule, the extinction or 
prophecy, the corruption of traditional religion, and consequent 
depravation of manners, all leading the faithful people to desire 
earnestly the accomplishment of the long-deferred promises to 
their fathers, concludes this canto, entitled Ddvid-vansas, or 
the Stem of David. 

The scholar now, satisfied as to his preliminary inquiries, re- 
quests the continuation of the history he heard in the second 
and third cantos, respecting the birth of the true Son of David 
in the reign of Herod. The instructor proceeds accordingly to 
the history of Joseph in the first chapter of St. Matthew, when 
the pregnancy of his betrothed wife became known to him, a 
new angelic message repeating to him what had before been an- 
nounced to Mary : the relation of which is followed, as in the 
Gospel, by the citation of the prophecy of Isaiah vii. 14. (the 
age and writer of which is known from the preceding history,) 
translated in a peculiar versification, answerable to the lofty 
style of the evangelical prophet. On that statement of the birth 
of Jesus being given, which concludes this chapter of St. Mat- 
thew, the disciple desires to learn its particulars ; which the 
teacher then relates exactly as they are found in the first twen- 
ty verses of the second chapter of St. Luke, only explaining the 
fourth verse by the observation, that Bethlehem of Judah, to 
which Joseph, as a descendant* of David, went to have his pa- 



* The difficulty of the two genealogies of our Lord is also tacitly solved 
here, by observing, that as Zorobabel the ancestor of Joseph, in whom thev 
meet, was doubly a son of David, (being naturally descended from Nathan the 
son of David, while from the adoption of Salathiel his father by the childless 
captive king Jeconiah he became legally a descendant of Solomon, as was stat- 
ed in the fifth canto,) even thus was Joseph also descended by a double line 



XV 



trimony enrolled, was the natal place of that great king and his 
fathers, Jesse, Obed, and Boaz ; the place where God called him 
" from the sheepfolds" to be the anointed ruler of his people. After 
this narration, (in which the song of the heavenly host is dis- 
tinguished by a characteristic poetical measure,) the instructor 
quotes the prophecy of Micah v. 2, lyrically rendered, to shew 
that the place of Christ's nativity, as well as its mode and 
circumstances, fulfilled the predictions of ancient Scripture ; and 
he concludes with citing (in the same measure as the former 
place of Isaiah) the noble prophecy, Is. ix. 1 — 7> which, be- 
ginning with the bursting of light from Galilee and other 
dark regions of the land,* ends with the most express annunci- 



froin Zovobabel. A similar cause is thus hinted for the latter variation between 
St. Matthew and St. Luke, to that which may be demonstrably assigned 
for the former one ; viz. the custom of legal adoption. Nothing however 
is attempted to be stated as to the mode of this adoption ; whether like Zoro- 
babel (who was naturally the son of Pedaiah, brother of Salathiel, 1 Chron. iii. 
17, seq.) Joseph became the son of Heli, uterine brother of Jacob, by the law 
that commanded the next kin to raise up seed to his childless brother: which is 
the solution given, apparently from traditional testimony, by Julius Africanus 
in the beginning of the second century, (Ep. ad Aristidem, in vol. ii. p. 114. 
seq. of Routh's Reliquae Sacree,) followed by Gregory of Nazianzen, in his 
curious poem on the subject, by Eusebius, Augustine, &c. as well as by 
Whitby and other moderns : — or whether, as Grotius has modified this scheme, 
Joseph was, like Salathiel, adopted by the same law from one branch of the fa- 
mily into another otherwise extinct, without any closer relationship between the 
two fathers than that which remounts to Zorobabel their common ancestor : 
which seems also the opinion of a very ingenious recent critic. See Hue's 
Introduction to the New Testament, vol. ii. p. 266, Wait's translation.) The 
only solution excluded here is that common one which does violence to St. 
Luke's words, by making him give the genealogy of Mary. [The descent of 
the Virgin herself (though connected also with the priestly family of Aaron) 
from the house of David is highly probable on other grounds.] 

* Reading ^ not ^ in v. 3, according to the Keri of the Masorets, and 
the most obvious sense : and in the 4th, making the sanguinary ensigns to 
become HEP^? "for a burning and fuel of flame," through the conquests 



XVI 



ation of the birth of the Incarnate God. Thus closes the sixth 
canto, called Kumari-prasavanam, (Virgineus partus.) 

The seventh canto opens with the retrospection that Beth- 
lehem Ephrata, distinguished of old (Gen. xxxv.) as the place 
where Rachel died in child-birth of the last hope of Israel, was 
now the birth-place of the great hope of his descendants and 
mankind from the Virgin- mother of the house of David : that 
there also that royal prophet himself, who had in the same place 
conceived the lofty expectation of giving a residence to the 
Divine Majesty, (Ps. cxxxii.) was to find his inspired pre- 
diction realized in its fullest ultimate meaning, that the horn of 
David should flourish upon earth, and the tabernacle of God be 
permanently fixed among men. And since he, in whom the 
fulness of the Godhead thus resided, was therefore sanctified by 
the Father, and sent into the world, that he might fulfil all 
righteousness; he was accordingly circumcised on the eighth 
day, and on the fortieth solemnly presented to God in his tem- 
ple at Jerusalem. The inquiry of the disciple respecting these 
ordinances is then met by a brief statement how Abraham by 
Divine command applied the seal of the righteousness of faith 
to Isaac, the infant heir of promise, when eight days old; but 
to Ishmael, at the age of thirteen years : from whom the rite 
descended to the Arab tribes, and to the Mahometans (whose 
practice in circumcising children at the more advanced age is fa- 
miliarly known to the people of India). The sacred significan- 
cy of the name of Jesus, which the Divine infant thus received, 



of the Deliverer: according to the plainest construction. (So Vitringa, with 
the mass of ancient and modern interpreters.) The Sanscrit translation of 
these verses, though not so verbally close as most of the prophetic versions 
which occur in the present work, will be found, I believe, to omit no idea 
in the original. (For the commencement of the quotation, of Matt. iv. 
12—16.) 



xvn 



is then pointed out;* after which, as in Luke 21 — 38, the 
journey to Jerusalem is related, for the purification of the 
Virgin-mother, and the presentation of the holy Child. The 
narration varies not from that of the Evangelist, except in a 
brief description of the courts of the temple, as traversed by the 
holy family on this occasion ; and the song of Simeon is trans- 
lated, almost literally, in the same lyrical measure as that of 
Zacharias in the third canto. After this account of the pre- 
sentation of the infant Lord, and the homage he received in his 
own house from Simeon and Anna, by whom the glad tidings 
were announced to all the truly faithful in Jerusalem; the in- 
structor remarks that here was the beginning of that glory 
which was predicted to shine forth from this second temple at 
the time of its erection by Zorobabel ; a glory eclipsing the 
splendour of Solomon's ancient building; which was like light- 
ning to shake all lands, and introduce the Desire of all nations, 
the expected Prince of Peace, to the world. The prophecy 
(Hagg. ii. 4 — 9,) which contains this having been quoted in its 
proper poetical dress, the scholar inquires respecting that in- 
terest of other nations besides Israel in this advent, which the 
words of Haggai and Simeon unite in ascribing to it. The in- 
structor upon this recalls to the pupil's memory first the pro- 
mise to Abraham, that all nations were to be blessed in his de- 
scendant ; a truth not left without witness in the intervening ages 
as he instances in Rahab, the great example of Gentile faith ; in 
Ruth of Moab, the ancestress of David and of Christ ; and in 
the admitted Gentiles of after-times ; as well those proselytes 
who by a regeneratory initiation were introduced to all the pri- 
vileges of Abraham's children, and were pledged equally with 



* This order is altered in the present edition, the visit of the Magi being 
inserted between the Circumcision and the Purification ; the latter of which, 
as here described, now forms the ninth canto. The subject of the relative po- 
sition of that visit, and Presentation in the temple, is very well argued by F. 
Spanheim, Evangel. Dub. torn. 1. 



xvni 

them to entire observance of the Mosaic rites ; as those pro- 
selytes of the gate, who without this last obligation and the ex- 
ternal privileges connected with it, were yet, like the Kenite fa- 
mily of Rechab in former times, admitted to worship the 
God of Israel as the sole Lord of heaven and earth, though 
received only as yet to the exterior precinct of his house, the 
comparatively desecrated court of the Gentiles. But the in- 
structor remarks, that a period was now at hand, when, as 
the Law and the Prophets themselves not obscurely inti- 
mated, this middle wall of partition was to be broken down, 
and the Gentiles admitted freely to that sacred Presence, 
hitherto the exclusive privilege of the members of Israel's house- 
hold. And though that Prince of Peace who was to destroy 
the enmity hereafter, was at this time a helpless infant, yet was 
even now an exhibition to be made of the promised favour and 
reconciliation, sufficient to excite the highest hopes in every 
pious Gentile mind. With this promise of the history of the 
adoration of the Heathen wise men, the instructor concludes 
this canto taken from St. Luke, and entitled Immanuye'la- 
pratisthd, or the Dedication of Immanuel, God with us.* 

He then commences that subject, peculiarly interesting to his 
hearer and all Heathens, by ascending to the very origin and 
fall of mankind ; telling briefly in the first verses, that when 
the first pair listened to the seducing serpent, and were con- 
demned to trouble and death as the penalty of disobedience, 
they received the gracious promise that the seed of the woman, 



* The name of the ninth canto in which the latter part of this history is 
now contained (omitting the announcement of the Magi's visit, as future) 
is altered to the more Sanscrit one of Asmat-saha-Isvara-pratisthd. Also 
the account of that visit is now in the eighth canto told in an unbroken history, 
as in St. Matthew, without being interrupted, as in the first edition, by the several 
disquisitions respecting the faith and calling of the Gentiles. That subject 
is reserved now to a separate canto, the tenth — in which more is introduced 
respecting the several perversions of Brahmanism and Buddhism, than in the 
former edition. 



XIX 

though wounded in the heel by the venomous reptile, should 
ultimately crush his head. When therefore this seed of the 
woman appeared, born in the manner already told of the 
pure Virgin of Judea, wise men of the East descried by a 
celestial sign the blessed Nativity, and travelled to Jerusalem 
with the inquiry, told in the beginning of St. Matthew's se- 
cond chapter, (and here exhibited, like the promise to David, 
in the Indra.vajra measure,) " Where is he that is born King 
of the Jews ? &c." a question which excites consternation in the 
mind of Herod, and commotion throughout the sacred city. 
Here however he is interrupted by the disciple, desiring to know 
how such a tradition as this was propagated from Adam to the 
times of which the teacher is now speaking. The instructor states 
briefly, that there was from the beginning a succession of faith- 
ful persons, to whom the first obscure promise of redemption 
from the Adversary's power afforded a satisfactory ground of 
faith and obedience : that even at the period when general 
wickedness procured the destruction of the habitable earth by a 
flood, there was a just Noah, who, as the true Manu, the 
progenitor of renewed mankind, propagated this with the pure 
truths of natural religion to his descendants : nor were these 
universally lost, even when the tumultuous waves of error, 
(the Mahd Maya of Indian mythology,) causing the reflexion 
of innumerable false* forms of the one true God, had covered 
the earth with idolatry and sin. Melchisedek, priest of the 
most high God, and king of the then Jebusite city of Jerusalem, 
is an instance in the days of Abraham of true religion exist- 
ing without the pale of his peculiar family ; as also were 
the Arabians, Jethro, priest of Madian in the days of Moses, 
and Job, the bright Gentile example of faith and patience 



* This image is frequent in the Vedantic writings, the Yoga Vasistha, the 
works of Sancara Acharya, &c. though by them less employed to maintain 
the true primeval notion of the Divine unity, than the more general Heathen 
one of ihe Divioe universality and identity with the creature. 

D 



XX 



in adversity : and thus in other instances, without doubt, 
equally without knowledge of the peculiar Mosaic revelation, 
the same pure religion might exist and be accepted in parts of 
the earth more remote from the chosen seats of the family 
of Shem. But in answer to the more particular inquiry, how 
came the knowledge of the Jewish origin of the Deliverer to the 
sages of the Gentile world, he describes the gradually extended 
fame of the election of Abraham's family — from the time of the 
deliverance from Egypt, and Balaam's prophecies to the Moab- 
ite king respecting their sacred character, and the conquering 
Star hereafter to arise from their borders, — till after the dis- 
persion consequent on the Babylonic captivity, the East was 
filled with the expectation, as contemporary historians assure 
us, of the universal King that was to arise from the land of 
Judea. And thus, the special favour of heaven conspiring with 
previous tradition, these Eastern magi discerned the signal star, 
and came to worship the new-born king in his sacred capital. 
Their history is then resumed, and told as in St. Matthew, but 
with the introduction of a more dramatic form, agreeably to the 
Puranic manner, in describing Herod's conference with the 
priests and scribes on the one hand, and with the Gentile 
sages on the other. After relating, as in Matt. ii. 9 — 12, their 
direction to Bethlehem, their worship and gifts, (gold to the 
king, myrrh to the mortal, incense to the God,) with their 
warning, and return to their land without revisiting the more 
favoured but ungrateful Jerusalem, the instructor quotes two 
striking passages of the evangelical Prophet, (Is. xi. 1, 2, 10, 
11, and xlix. 5, 6, seq.*) predicting that confluence of distant 
Gentiles to the standard of the Son of David, of which this 
visit of the magi to the Branch of Jesse's root at Bethlehem was 



* The choice of this latter passage for the quotation on the memorable occa- 
sion, Acts xiii. 42—49, by the commissioned Apostles of the Gentiles, was one 
principal reason for selecting it from so many others of similar import. 



XXI 



the first conspicuous accomplishment. After which, having 
declared that the expectations before mentioned were not con- 
fined to the Eastern world, but that similar hopes were at 
this very time fostered by the traditional verses of Western 
gentilism, (as in Virgil's fourth Eclogue,) he concludes this 
eighth canto, entitled Lokanayaka-naxatra-xidayas, or the 
Rising of the Star to guide the Nations.* 

The next canto opens with a soliloquy of Herod, while expect- 
ing the return of the wise men ; introduced to explain to the 
Heathen hearer the views on which the wicked monarch acted ; 
the terror inspired in his mind, conscious of a different descent 
(and that too from Idumean proselytes in the comparative recent 
conquests of Johannes Hyrcanus) by the general Jewish ex- 
pectation at this time of an anointed Prince of the house of 
David, which went to annihilate all prospect of a new dynasty 
in his own house; his hope of discovering the dreaded rival by 
means of the Eastern astrologers ; his rage when he found that 
they had eluded him, and left him ignorant of his destined victim ; 
his consequent barbarous order of a general massacre of infants at 
Bethlehem, as related in Matt. ii. 16 — 18. The citation from 
Jeremiah is however given at greater length, extending from ch. 
xxxi. 15, the place quoted by St. Matthew, to the promised 
restoration of Rachel's children of Ephraim, on repentance, from 
the Assyrian desolation and dispersion, which is contained in the 
following verses to ver. 33; a promise which, the instructor 
declares, was hereafter to be verified to the real Israel, through 
that offspring of the Virgin-mother who was now menaced with 
destruction. The pupil inquiring, how then did Jesus escape 
the massacre, hears the statement of the angelic vision to Joseph, 
and flight to Egypt, as contained in the 13th and 14th verses of 
this chapter of St. Matthew ; accompanied here with a descrip- 



* All that is not historical in the above account is now transferred from, the 
eighth canto to the tenth : and with considerable alteration, as indicated in the 
note p. xxix. 



XXII 

tion of the holy family's route through the wild border region 
to that celebrated seat of Gentile mythology ; and with a com- 
parison of the humble Joseph, who thus fled to rescue from 
destruction by his own people the future Saviour of Israel and 
of mankind, with the distinguished ancient patriarch of the 
same name, who escaped from his murderous brethren to the 
same country, designed by Providence to preserve life to his 
family, (Gen. xlv. 5,) and pave the way for their afterwards 
obtaining that promised land, to which, faithful in death, he 
adjured his brethren and posterity to convey his own mortal 
remains, (l. 25, 26 ; Heb. xi. 22.) This parallel is intended to 
prepare for the citation by St. Matthew in the next verse, of the 
well-known prophecy of Hosea: "Out of Egypt have I called 
my son ;" which is then cited in its appropriate dress by the 
instructor; — applying as well to the infant nation called at that 
early period from its foreign sojourn to the conquest of the 
earthly Canaan, as to Him of whom Israel was there the typi- 
cal representative, the incarnate restorer of a heavenly inheri- 
tance to all the children of God. In comparing these two 
deliverances the instructor has again recourse to Jeremiah, 
whose words concerning them in ch. xxxi. 32, he had quoted 
before in this canto ; citing in the same elegiac measure, 
which answers to the style of that prophet, his memorable pre- 
diction, that the redemption effected by this royal Branch of the 
house of David should cause the old deliverance from Egypt to 
be no longer remembered in comparison. With this citation of 
Jer. xxiii. 5 — 8, he closes this ninth canto,* entitled Vadah- 
dravanam, or the Flight from Slaughter. 

The Heathen disciple here expresses admiration that one 
who was the object of hopes like these to Israelites, and 



* This is now the eleventh— the separation of the Circumcision from the 
Presentation in the temple, by placing the visit of the Magi between,— and the 
separation from the latter of all that belongs to the general subject of the 
calling of the Gentiles,— having occasioned an addition of two to the number 
of cantos. 



XX1U 

also to Gentiles, should be found in such circumstances of low- 
liness and adversity ; a wonder much increased by the hint 
of the instructor in the course of the last canto, that it is 
through further sufferings also that the Christ is to accomplish 
these predictions of extended empire : but he for the present 
limits his curiosity to the question, how the mysterious babe 
returned from Egypt. The instructor answers, that Herod did 
not long survive that instance of his inhuman cruelty : and he 
relates briefly from Jo3ephus (Bell. Jud. lib. i. cap. 33,) the 
loathsome circumstances that attended his last sickness and 
death at Jericho : the execution five days before of his eldest son 
Antipater, his abettor in all former schemes for destroying the 
dreaded Christ ; the nomination of Archelaus, the worst of 
his surviving sons to succeed him at Jerusalem ; of Antipas 
and Philip as respective rulers of Galilee and Trachonitis. 
Then, as in Matt, ii, 19, et seq. he relates the new angelic 
vision to Joseph, acquainting him that the child's intended des- 
troyers are dead : the ascent of the Son of God from the land of 
exile, and the retreat to the northern region of Galilee, to 
be secure from the jealous cruelty of Archelaus : concluding 
with the fact implied in the last verse of the chapter, that at 
Nazareth, a city bearing that name of the Branch which 
prophetically described the Messiah the son of David, (as the 
quotations in the preceding cantos had shewn,) the holy Child 
was fixed and grew till the period of his active ministry should 
arrive. The disciple then asking whether the dynasty of 
Herod continued during the whole of that interval, the precep- 
tor tells him, that between nine and ten years from Herod's 
death, (an event which he specifies particularly as being three 
years before our vulgar era,) seven hundred and fifty from the 
building of Rome, fifty three from Vicramaditya, and eighty 
one before Salivahana, Archelaus was removed from the dignity 
he abused by the Emperor Augustus ; and the state of Judea 
altered from that of a dependent and tributary kingdom, to that 
of an integral part of the Roman empire, annexed to the pro- 



XXIV 



consulate of Syria : in consequence of which change, the procon- 
sul Quirinus (the Cyrenius of Luke ii. 2) now carried into 
effect the taxing, agreeably to the assessment made eleven years 
before, ere the turbulent and unsettled government of Archelaus 
began. In this remarkable change, which produced the fanatic 
insurrection of Judas of Galilee, and gives occasion to remark on 
the Pharisaic opinion of the unlawfulness of paying tribute to 
Heathen power, the instructor directs his pupil to discern 
the fulfilment of a most ancient prophecy concerning the 
Messiah, delivered by the patriarch Jacob or Israel himself. 
The blessing of Judah (Gen. xlix. 8, 9) is then quoted in a 
peculiar and characteristic measure ; and is followed by the 
observation, that the period when the royal sceptre of the whole 
chosen nation, long held in Jerusalem the capital of that distin- 
guished tribe, was on the point of passing from its native posses- 
sors (who though not of the legitimate royal house of David, 
were Jews by law and religion) into the hands of an utterly 
alien and Heathen power, was the proper season for that right- 
ful* heir of the sceptre to be manifested, to whom not the tribes 



* " Until Shiloh come :" or rather, — as all the most ancient MSS. read, not 
H/^ but tiyV2> i. e. in the exactly corresponding words of the old Arabic 

version, *5 y& ^4^1 and of the Syriac, .»01 Ol_^»> ^io Is ccjus (est), — 
"Until he come to whom belongs" the Sceptre and the right of the Law- 
giver before mentioned ; i. e. according to the ancient Chaldee paraphrast, 
NJTO^D NVirP^m NITtfD "Messiah, whose it that kingdom ;', 

or, according to Aquila, Symmachus, and the Vatican copy of the LXX. 
r » r 
U) airoKtlTaif « He for whom it is reserved." Among the Rabbins 

Jarchi explains it, like the Targumist, !T?t£J HD^pU/ "'Q and that such was 
the understanding (as well as the sole reading) of the Samaritans, appears 

from one of their Arabic versions giving it like the preceding, C—S-WM £) ^-o 

" Whose is the kingdom," and another **S « Its rightful possessor." 

And a far greater authority, the prophet Ezekicl, (whose W "1t£M in chap. 



XXV 

of Israel only, but all the nations, were to be gathered as submis- 
sive adherents : who, though the true Lion of the tribe of Judah, 
was not to appear, as the present Jews thought, " with confused 
noise and garments rolled in blood ;" but agreeably to the spirit 
of the already cited prophecies of Isaiah with the ensigns of 
spiritual power as Prince of Peace, issuing from the obscure 
province termed Galilee of the Gentiles. Thus ends the tenth* 
canto, entitled Rajyavikdras, or the Change of Sovereignty. 

The instructor now states himself to have comprised in the 
preceding cantos all that the Christian Scriptures enable him to 
communicate on his present subject. Yesii-utpattis, or Birth of 
Jesus and its circumstances : he must reserve to another series 
the events which distinguish our Lord's active life and ministry, 
and to another still his final triumph over the powers of dark- 
ness by his cross and triumphant resurrection. But before closing 
his present subject, he would wish to satisfy his pupil as to any 
thing in the present history appearing to require elucidation. 
The scholar then asks, if he is correct in the impression that 
there was but one temple of the living God for all the chosen 



xxi. '27, is literally Jacob's n'-)^) thus cites and repeats the patriarch's pro- 
phecy of the future rightful heir of the sceptre and diadem, at the crisis of the 
Babylonic captivity, when the legitimate royal line of David were on the point 
of losing them, and that without recovery, except as they were to be spiritu- 
ally restored, in the Messiah: "Until he come, whose kight it is." 

The otherwise celebrated name of Shiloh, known only in connexion with 
the rival and comparatively rejected tribe of Joseph, (viz. as being the seat of 
the Divine Presence from Joshua to Samuel,) can have no place here: while 
the interpretations of it, as a supposed title of the Messiah, are equally various 
and unsatisfactory. I have therefore unhesitatingly followed the older reading 
and versions of this most important prophecy, in the metrical Sanscrit transla- 
tion. For a confirmation of this view of the word Shelloh, and at the same 
time for the fullest discussion of the whole of this celebrated prediction, the 
critical reader may be referred to Jahn, Appendix Hermenenticce, (Vienna, 
1815,) vol. ii. pp. 175 — 187 ; or to Durel on the Parallel Prophecies of Jacob 
and Moses, (Oxford, 1763,) pp. 61 — 7U, — two entirely independent critics. 

* Now the Twelfth. 



XXVI 



nation, how could the true Israelites perform their stated adora- 
tions, when like the parents of Jesus in Nazareth they lived at a 
distance from Jerusalem ? The teacher replies, that this limita- 
tion of the peculiar honours of the Divine Presence to one spot, 
which on the principal festivals all Israelites, however distant, 
were commanded to resort, was indeed a necessary charac- 
teristic of that preparatory and imperfect religion, which was to 
be abolished when the new and more spiritual covenant already 
announced, as he has heard, by Jeremiah and other Prophets, 
should be promulgated by the Word Incarnate to mankind : 
nevertheless the faithful people were not left even then desti- 
tute of the daily means of piety ; having among them an 
organized priesthood, and the services of the synagogue, where 
Moses, the Prophets, and the other Scriptures were read to 
them every seventh day. The pupil now desires to know what 
are these sacred books to which allusions have been made so 
frequently in the course of the preceding history. In answer 
to this, the teacher describes in succession the contents of. 
the several books of the divinely inspired legislator, that com- 
pose the sacred volume of the Pentateuch : he then proceeds 
to the historical books of the Old Testament, particularizing 
their several ages and subjects ; then the most ancient book 
of Job, ascribed to Moses when sojourning with his Arabian 
father-in-law at Madian ; the divine collection of Pslams ; the 
several works of Solomon ; and lastly, the sixteen Prophets, 
enumerated in the order of their several ages, but with notice of 
the place of each in the canon of the ancient Scripture. The 
coincident testimony of Christians and unbelieving Jews, sepa- 
rated as they have been from the time of the Saviour him- 
self, to the integrity of these inspired writings is urged by the 
teacher on his disciple : as well as the coincidence with res- 
pect to the first and most sacred of all, of a body of men long 
entirely distinct from both, the Samaritans, inheritors of the 
schism of the ten tribes, zealous for the Law, but rejectors of 
David and the Prophets. The pupil now inquiring whether 



XXV11 

this succession of Scriptures from Moses to Malachi ceased 
wholly during the four hundred years that remained till 
the coming of the Lord ; he answers, that with respect to in- 
spired writings written under the immediate influence of the 
Holy Ghost, this was indeed the case ; yet there was not want- 
ing a true Church of God in this interval, nor genuine monu- 
ments to commemorate it, which the Alexandrine Jews have 
left behind them, and which the Christian Church has never 
ceased religiously to preserve and have in honour. He then 
enumerates the extra-canonical books of Tobit and Judith ; 
the valuable book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, and the 
still more excellent one which has Jesus the son of Sirach for 
its author; the Epistle of Baruch ; and the books of Maccabees ; 
(distinguishing the most authentic and excellent history con- 
tained in the former of the two, from the more doubtful narra- 
tions from another hand that compose the latter ;) and ending 
with the apocryphal additions to the book of Ezra or Esdras, 
to Esther, to Daniel, and to the book of Chronicles. With the 
remark that these may and ought to be read for instruction, but 
not like the canonical Scriptures, as having the Spirit of God 
for their proper author, the teacher concludes this canto. 

The scholar proceeds in his inquiries, and asks why was the 
Saturday or seventh day of the week allotted above all other 
days to the sacred service before described ? The origin of the 
Sabbath is therefore deduced from the Mosaic account of the 
creation, comprised here in three distichs, beginning with the 
creation of light by the Divine Word on the first day, Surya- 
vdra or Sunday, and ending with the creation of man on the 
Friday, and the Divine rest on the seventh day following: on 
which account, and also on account of the redemption of Israel 
from Egypt on the same day, (both reasons being severally 
assigned in the two editions of the Decalogue, Exod. xx. 
and Deut. v.) God gave his Sabbaths to be a sign between 
him and his chosen people Israel; (Ezek. xx. 12;) in con- 
firmation of which it is remarked, that while the hebdoma- 

K 



xxvni 

dal division of time, in which the first place belongs to the 
Sunday, is matter of common tradition from the foundation of 
the world, in which the aborigines of Western Europe agree 
minutely with India and the remotest East* ; the sanctification 
of the seventh of these days for Divine worship and rest from 
labour is found in Israel alone. The sabbatic year and the 
jubilee also being just mentioned, the disciple extends his 
inquiries to those annual festivals which required the presence 
of the true Israelites in Jerusalem. The instructor accordingly 
describes the sacred seasons to which this pre-eminence was 
assigned in the Mosaic institution ; viz. the Pascha or Passover, 
in the full moon next following the vernal equinox ; the 
Pentecost or Feast of Weeks, seven weeks from the preceding 
and the Feast of Tabernacles, holding the same position with 
respect to the autumnal equinox ; with a concise account of 
the origin and services of each in their respective periods, but 
most particularly of the first, the great feast of Israel's redemp- 
tion from bondage. After this he gives some account of the 
other principal observances of the Jews, particularly of the Fast 
of Expiation, preceding the last of the three great festivals ; also 
of the Feast of Trumpets, on the new moon preceding, (the 
commencement of the civil year,) as ordained by the divinely 
inspired legislator. To this account of the Mosaic solemnities 
succeeds a short mention of two of later institution, and observ- 
ed by our Lord ; viz. the Encaenia, or Feast of Dedication, 
memorable from the days of the Antiochian persecution, and 
that of Purim or the Lots, equally celebrated from those of 
Esther and Xerxes. After which, the pupil inquiring as to the 
share that the child Jesus took in the annual celebrations which 
brought Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem, the instructor relates 
the memorable history that concludes the second chapter of St. 



* Memoires suv la Chine, torn. ix. p. 381. 



XXIX 



Luke, respecting the Saviour in the temple when twelve years 
old. The narration differs only from that of the Evangelist, in 
taking occasion to describe the ceremonies of the paschal lamb, 
&c. as they must have been observed by Joseph and his family 
on this occasion, and in the introduction of the remark that the 
infant Jesus, who partook of these symbolic offerings, was him- 
self to hallow this sacred season hereafter by a holier and all- 
perfect sacrifice. The conference with his mother, and return 
to Nazareth, with his subjection to his parents in that city, 
are told as in St. Luke's closing verses, which (merely adding 
the circumstance that Joseph died between this time and that 
of the after history) form the conclusion of this twelfth canto 
entitled Prabhu-ydtrakatha-nam. 

The instructor now declares, that in this history of Jesus's 
colloquy with the doctors, he has concluded all which the au- 
thentic records of Christianity supply for the thirty years of our 
Lord's life preceding his inauguration and public ministry. 
That further display of the great mystery of Christianity, which 
occurred during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, (the adopted suc- 
cessor of that Emperor in whose time all the preceding events 
took place,) he reserves altogether for a future occasion. But as 
the disciple has yet one inquiry, whether, as the Jewish sacred 
books are held sacred by the followers of Christ, the Sabbath 
and the festivals above mentioned are observed by them also: 
he will reply to this question before he concludes. The events 
of Christianity being the substantial blessings which those of 
Judaism only shadowed forth to former ages, we do not with 
them of old time retain the Sabbath as a memorial of deliver- 
ance from Egypt, or even of the finished creation ; but we cele- 
brate weekly a greater fact, more proper for the redeemed of 
God — to observe, that of the freedom of creation from bondage 
by virtue of the Lord's triumph over death, an event which (as 
will be afterwards shewn) distinguished not the seventh or Sab- 
bath day, but the first day of the week, the Sunday. And of 
the annual festivals, though the Christian Church has indeed 



XXX 

from the apostolic times retained the Paschal and the Pentecost 
solemnities, it is not in remembrance of the Israelitic events 
that she observes them ; but the one as the monument of a re- 
demption infinitely transcending that from Pharaoh's bondage; 
the other of the descent of a purer and more gracious law than 
that engraven on stones which came from Sinai; events which 
respectively distinguished (as will be declared hereafter) the 
same sacred seasons, and fulfilled the declarations of ancient 
prophecy as to their comparative claim to remembrance (ut sup. 
Jer. xxiii. 6, 7; aQ d xxxi. 32, 33). The other feasts of the 
Jewish ritual are obsolete, and together with these two, (now 
observed in a more spiritual manner, as well as on new and 
higher grounds,) there are some others of inferior note, and later 
ecclesiastical institution, but still pointing to one great object, 
Christ the Saviour of the world. The pupil then expressing 
curiosity to learn what are the festivals which relate to the 
events he has already heard, the instructor proceeds to tell him 
that on the 25th day of the first Roman month of March, the 
fourth after the vernal equinox, the Christian Church comme- 
morates the blessed Annunciation of his coming in the flesh, 
made to the highly favoured Virgin of Nazareth : that three 
months after this, (the Paschal and Pentecost solemnities 
intervening, the Christian events of which remain to be told,) 
i. e. on the 24th of June, the nativity of his great forerunner, 
John the Baptist, is commemorated ; and six months after this, 
agreeably to the sacred history above related, i. e. on the 25th 
of December, or nine months from its first Annunciation, the 
nativity of the Lord himself, preceded by four weeks of Advent 
and kept as a season of holy rejoicing for twelve days following. 
On the third day of this season the slaughter of the Innocents of 
Bethlehem, who shed their blood for the infant Saviour of 
mankind, is commemorated ; but the eighth day from the 
Nativity, which is the first of the modern year, is appropriated, 
agreeably to the previous history, to the Circumcision ; while 
the twelfth and last day of the season, January till), celebrates 



XXXI 



the joyful event of his Epiphany, or Manifestation to the Gentile 
world, here represented by the wise worshippers of the East. 
Lastly, the fortieth day from the Nativity, February 2d, is ap- 
propriated, according to the history, to the commemoration of 
the Purification of the Virgin, and our Lord's Presentation 
in that temple, which he was to illuminate and purify by 
his presence. On these days, the teacher observes, the Christian 
Church renews perpetually her more express sacrifice of praise 
and thanksgiving, ever due on these several accounts to her 
Lord and Redeemer : and he bids the disciple hear, in con- 
clusion of the whole matter, a hymn, such as Christians sing to 
the incarnate Son of God. Thus ends this short canto, entitled 
Avatirnaparva-vamanam. 

The fourteenth and last canto, thus announced, consists of 
three parts ; of which the first and last are in the lyric 
Indra-vajra measure ; the middle one in the ordinary iambic 
of the dialogue. The first is a eulogy of Him who, being in the 
form of God and equal to God, — the true Light of Light, 
the effulgence of his Father's glory and expressed image or copy 
of his substance, — descended to the darkness of human condition 
and took on him the form and actual nature of man, to redeem 
us from the curse of sin: enumerating in rapid succession the 
admirable circumstances of contrast with which his first appear- 
ance in the world was encompassed, as titles to the love and 
adoration due to him from all creatures. The second is the 
actual sanslava, or ascription of distinct praises to Him as being 
God over all from eternity, and also from the commencement of 
the history of the fallen world, the great object of human 
hope, — of implicit preparation where not of explicit and direct 
announcement : each particular in which Christ thus stands 
related to us as Creator, Lord, or presignified Saviour, from the 
earliest times to John his immediate forerunner, being described 
in a distinct distich, and closed with its proper title in liturgic 
form ; a form borrowed from the Puranas, but Christianized, 
I trust effectually, both in the matter and mode of expres- 



xxxn 



sion.* The third is a series of prayers, the form of which is found 
also in the same Hindu writings, but of which there are many 
equally close resemblances in the litanies of Christian worship ;t 



* The reader may indeed be requested to bear in mind, that this is writ- 
ten for Asiatics, and therefore not to measure its expression precisely by the 
same rules which European taste would dictate in these compositions; far 
less by the puritanical humour which finds heathenish repetition in every in- 
stance of that responsive service which the soundest judgment approves, and 
which the consent of universal Christendom has sanctioned and confirmed. 
To quote the venerable Oriental Liturgies for examples of what is consistent 
with Asiatic Christianity in this matter, would, I am aware, only serve to 
increase the prejudice of persons thus minded. But the examples of the 
Jewish Scriptures, of the 136th Psalm for instance, should meet with more 
respect; and might lead the most prejudiced to the conclusion, (which other- 
wise might seem sufficiently evident of itself,) that the Heathen battologia 
condemned by our Lord is the vain profusion of words, uttered (like the inces- 
santly reiterated Hari ! or Ram ! of the Hindu devotee) as if they were of 
themselves acceptable, without understanding or feeling on the part of the 
worshipper ; and by no means applies to such repetition of terms, as however 
unnecessary it may be towards the logical enunciation of any proposition, (a 
rule by which no man of sound mind would think of estimating any devotional 
composition,) is fitted by the constitution of the minds that employ it to add 
intensity to the sentiment repeated. In judging of what is proper for Hindus 
in this respect, (for I am not here speaking of any matter of principle in which 
compromise can be deemed unlawful or even inexpedient,) it is surely better 
to take the standard of that literature by which the national character is indi- 
cated as well as formed, than to draw immature conclusions from those among 
them, who by a national readiness of imitation have learned to talk rather 
than to think like Europeans on some subjects. I offer these considerations, 
to account for having in this portion of the hymn introduced a little more re- 
petition than I should have thought of giving in any Western language. But 
whoever will compare this with the Sanscrit passage which I had most in my 
mind, the Namaskura of the fifth section of the Devi Mdhdtmyam in the Mar- 
candeya Purana, will perceive, that while the same form characterises both, 
there is here more variety in the expression of the /orwer half of each distich, 
and also a more distinct meaning thrown in each instance into the response of 
the latter. 

f I need go no farther than to the writings of Jeremy Taylor, of Launcelot 
Andrews, and some others in our own nation, for instances very nearly corres- 
ponding to this. See particularly an Office for the Holy Week by the last-named 
admirable Bishop, including distinct commemorations and applications of all 



XXXU1 



prayers addressed to God as the Father of our Lord, and there- 
fore ours also, by all those admirable particulars of his Son's 
manifestation in the flesh, which the first part had severally 
enumerated, that this mystery of divine condescension may have 
its proper salutary efficiency in ourselves : by his Annunciation, 
that we may obtain grace and the quickening energy of the 
Holy Spirit ; by the designation of his forerunner, faithful 
readiness and the removal of every vicious obstacle ; by his Na- 
tivity of the virgin in the stall at Bethlehem, humility and 



the above-mentioned particulars, with others, in the life of the Saviour. Other 
instances occur too numerous for distinct reference in the writings of the 
Fathers, Western as well as Eastern. In this part, therefore, I have not 
conceded any thing, either in taste or expression, to the Hindus ; but merely 
sought among them the material of language and measure, in which these 
Christian sentiments might be expressed. 

The Sanscrit passage which suggested this material is the Saivam Kavakam 
or Siva Varma, (the Panoply of Siva,) in the Brahmottara section of the 
Skanda-Purana; in which appeal is made to that most popular divinity of 
India, the destroying Mahadeva, by his several acts and titles depending on 
them, for special instances of favour and protection. By the specimens that 
I now give of this Panoply, compared with the corresponding appeals in this 
work, from the acts of the condescending and compassionate Saviour of man- 
kind, the reader may judge for himself how far the latter is likely to encou- 
rage a taste for the former ; and unless he is disposed to think that hearing the 
praises of Jehovah celebrated with cymbal and harp in the Psalms was likely 
to inspire an Israelite with the taste of worshipping Baal, and lacerating him- 
felf in his honour, I need not fear the result of his judgment. 

Mdm paru De'vo ' khila-devatatmd May he, the God who is the 

Sansdra-kupe" patitam gabhire soul of all inferior deities, pre- 

Tan-ndma divyam vara-mantra-mulam serve me fallen in the world's 

Dhunotumesarvamaghamhridi-stham deep gulph ! May his divine 

name, the root of most excellent 
* * * magic incantations, (mantra,) 

remove all the sin seated in 

my heart! 

Y6 Bhii-svarupena bibharti visvam May he who in the form of 

Pdydt sa bhiimer Giri-so 'sta-murtis Earth sustains the universe, pre- 

Y6 'pum svarupdna nrin&m karoti serve me from the dangers of 

Sanjivanam so 'vatu mdm jaUbhyds land, (even he,) the mountain- 



XXXI V 

entire conformity of heart and lifa to him ; by his intended 
slaughter and its guiltless victims, innocence and unrepining 
suffering for the truth's sake ; by his Circumcision and the 
adorable name he there received, devotion, mortification, and 
obedience ; by his Epiphany to the Gentile sages, illumina- 



Kalpdvasane bhuvandni dagdkvd 
Sarvdni yd nrityati bhuri-lilas 

Sa kdla-Rudro'vatu mum davagner 
Vdtddi-bhiter akhildgga tdpat 



sleeper, the Eight-formed ! May 
he who in the form of water 
makes the continual life of 
men, protect me from the wa- 
tery flood ! 

May he who at the end of 
the Calpa, (the ever recurring 
day and night of Brahma, con- 
sisting of 4320 millions of 
years,) having set the world in 
flame, dances with huge sport, 

* * * — even he, the dark Rudra,— 

protect me from the stormy 

* * * blast and similar terrors, and 

from every distress ! * * * 

Mhrdhdnam avydn mama qandra-maulir May he guard my head who 

Bhdlam mamdvydd atha Bhula-netras has the moon for his diadem. 

Netram mamdvydd Bhaga-netra-horir May he also guard my forehead 

Ndsam sadd raxatu Visva-ndthas who has a frontal eye ! May he 

guard my eye who (in revenge 
for a sarcastic wink) plucked 
out the eyes of the sun ! May 
he everpreservemynose (nasa) 
who is the lord (natha) of the 
universe ! 

May he defend my ear, in 
whose ear is the praise of 
hymns; he guard my cheek 
who is Capali (decked with a 
necklace of skulls) ! May he 
ever preserve my face who is 
Five-faced ; he ever preserve 
my tongue on whose tongue, 
are the Vedas ! 



Pdydgghrutim mi sruti-gita-kirtis 
Kapolam avydt satatam Kapuli 

Vaktram Sadd raxatu Panga-vaktro 
Jihvdm sadu raxatu Vdda-jihxas. 



XXXV 



tion in the way of peace, and acceptance of our offerings, 
our alms, and other works of duty ; by his Presentation in 
the temple, purification and self-dedication, with acceptance 
through his sole merits at the heavenly altar. Thus having 
traced, as far as these introductory circumstances extend, the 



Kantham Giriso' vatu Nilakanthas May he guard my throat 

P&ni-dvayam pdtu Pinaka pdnis who is the Blue-throated lord 

D6r-mulam avydn mama Dharma-bdhur of Himalaya ; he defend my 

Vaxa-sthalam Daxa-makhdntako'vydt. pair of hands whose hand 

holds the bow ! May he guard 
my armpit, who is the Arm of 
righteousness or religious me- 
rit; he guard the region of my 
breast (Vaxa), who (withfierce 
slaughter to avenge a slight) 
destroyed the sacrificial feast of 
Daxa his father-in-law. 
And thus the idolatrous author proceeds through all the parts of the body, 
(as also through every quarter of the compass, and every hour of the day, 
with every posture and occupation in which he may be found,) alleging for 
each corresponding titles to protection, in the several legends of his god. The 
reader who has not the exquisite harmony of the Sanscrit numbers to support 
his attention, has probably much more than enough of this Panoply : whose 
wearer (i. e. the hearer and retainer of these precious amulets) is described 
as superior to all portents, calamity, poison, &c. &c. as an object of worship to 
the gods, and as ipso facto absolved from the guilt of a host of Mdhapataka, or 
sins of the deepest dye, as well as of the upapataka of the more heinous sins of 
the next order to these. [The former class comprehends the murderer of a 
Brahman or of his cow, the invader of his Guru's bed, the drinker of spirits : 
the second includes, amongst many others, atheism, the selling of a daughter, 
&c. &c] 

To a system, which places sublime precepts of spiritual abstraction in 
juxta-position with appeals and motives like these, can any one question 
the applicability of the words of St. Augustine respecting the paganism of his 
day ? " Quis enim alius Spiritus occulto instinctu nequissimas agitat mentes, 
et instat faciendis adulteriis, et pascitur factis— nisi qui etiam sacris talibus 
oblectatur ; — susurrans in occulto verba justitice ad decipiendos etiam paucos 
bonos—frequentans in aperto incitamenta nequitice, ad possidendos innumera- 
biles malos?" De Civitate Dei, lib. i. c. 26. 

V 



XXXVI 

moral influence of the Gospel on the hearts and wishes of 
its faithful adherents, the instructor concludes with the an- 
gelic song, " Glory to God in the highest," &c. thus closing 
the canto, and with it this first book of the Indian Christiad, 
which is entitled Yesu.utpatti, or the Origin of Jesus. 

The books relating to the more important parts of the evan- 
gelical history will, as I have strength and opportunity, follow 
in their course. To this full and perhaps too prolix description 
of the first book, I have been induced by a wish to afford some 
account, at the same time more compendious and more satis- 
factory than a translation, to the many friends of the College 
over which I preside, who desired it of me. I cannot however 
close this account of this part of the work without expressing 
generally my thanks to those who have assisted me in its pro- 
gress, or without more distinctly particularizing one name, 
inseparably connected in India and in Europe with the culti- 
vation of Sanscrit literature, that of H. H. Wilson, Esq., 
whose critical observations, kindly afforded to the sheets as they 
passed through the press, have been, as they could not fail to 
be, of the highest possible value. 

Of the probable utility of the work, those whose interest in 
its contents may have led them to accompany me thus far in 
the description may perhaps expect to hear. A poem of this 
nature has, if tolerably executed, an access to many of the 
higher orders of Hindus which no tracts or scriptural versions 
in any of ihe ordinary spoken languages can, in the present 
state of their feelings and prejudices, possibly attain ; while in 
the greater extent of country over which it is read, (the San- 
scrit being studied by the learned in every part of this vast 
country,) it has a compensatory advantage for the more limited 
number of its readers. It may therefore be auxiliary to the 
vernacular translations, by bespeaking attention to them with 
some of that influential class, who would otherwise despise and 
reject them without examination : more particularly by shew- 
ing, in the compass of one history, and in the genuine Hindu 



xxxvn 



manner, the coherence of the several parts of our Scriptures, in 
their common reference to the one great subject whom that 
history describes ; and in fixing, by occasional specimens intro- 
duced naturally in the course of the narration, a sense of the 
sacredness and sublimity of their contents, in minds far from 
insensible (as all who know them truly will bear witness) 
to the impressions of moral grandeur and beauty. And while 
exertions of no common zeal and ability are directed to the 
intellectual improvement of the wealthier of our native fellow- 
subjects at the capital of this presidency, it may not be unim- 
portant to supply in this .manner to a class which includes most 
of these, and many more than these, in its number,— what is there 
not only not imparted, but I fear in some instances sedulously 
excluded, — the knowledge of the one object to which the reli- 
gious feelings, the deepest seated and most important of all, can 
be safely and beneficially directed. While some might even 
seem desirous to eradicate from their minds the few good impres- 
sions of the Supreme Power that their wretched system has 
allowed them to retain, it may not be useless to let them hear 
through this Hindu medium, but without compromise or con- 
cealment, of that higher truth, which is not merely the recti- 
fication of their depraved theism, but the mystery of human re- 
covery " hidden from ages and generations" — concealed rather 
than signified in the Avataras of their distorted tradition, — the 
knowledge of which among ourselves, with the happy freedom 
and other blessings resulting from it, constitutes, in the opinion 
of the best-minded among us, the true principle of our mental 
and moral superiority,- — on adherence to which we can alone 
rest any confident hopes of its permanence. 

It is difficult to judge of the probable success of this under- 
taking, by any present appearances. Many Brahmans have 
expressed a strong desire to read this work : and one Heathen 
Pandit now teaches it to his Heathen pupils. In the temple of 
Caligha't, the principal object of religious attraction in the 
neighbourhood of this city, I have witnessed what I may term 



xxx via 

its eager reception by a number of priestly devotees from various 
parts of India ; who in those precincts would have rejected even 
with contumely the gift of any Bengali or Hindu tract, but who 
read and chanted this, with a full knowledge of its anti-idola- 
trous tendency, even close to the shrine of their impure goddess, 
and on the floor stained with the blood of her hundreds of daily 
slain victims. No one acquainted with India will rate these 
facts at more than their real worth : and to those who, in igno- 
rance of the genius of paganism, might found erroneous concep- 
tions on them, it may be sufficient to recall to mind what is the 
most melancholy moral trait in the aecount of this work, the 
readiness* with which these devotees of superstition can assume 
the ideas and expressions of a faith most opposed to it. But to 
such as believe that the only power which can raise India from 
moral apathy and degeneracy is that of which this work, how- 



* In no instance have I seen this more strikingly exhibited than in the 
positive pleasure with which every Brahman that I have consulted, has seen 
and criticised the Sanscrit imitation which I have placed as the motto of this 
work : where well-known instances of Indian superstition, closely correspond- 
ing to those Greek and Egyptian ones which the excellent Father renounces 
in such unsparing terms of condemnation to his pagan friend Nemesius, are 
commented upon in precisely the same terms to the Hindus. So little has 
moral approval, or a sense of what is true in the objects of religion, to do with 
the Brahmanical system, that this passing sympathy with the known disappro- 
bation and scorn with which the unholy foreigner regards the same objects, is 
no impeachment of the devotee's own allegiance to them. It would be ex- 
tremely erroneous to infer from that apparent indifference to the object of faith 
in which the Bramanic votary so differs from the proselyting Mahometan, that 
he is not equally sensitive with the Mussulman or any other religionist, to 
every thing in which the Religio of his system is involved, the ever-recurring 
ordinance and prescriptive rite which is so inseparably interwoven with every 
habit of his life. This is the case even with the Pandit Ramachandra 
Vidyabhushan, to whom I owe the first idea of this work : of whom also I may 
remark, that though sufficiently enlightened to confess freely the moral supe- 
riority of the Gospel to the exoteric superstition to which he conforms, he 
declares with equal frankness, his decided preference of the mystic theology 
of the Bhagaved Gita to any thing which he has seen in Christianity. 



XXXIX 



ever imperfectly executed, is the subject, — even these appear- 
ances may not be destitute of hope ; and such will not refuse 
their good wishes to an attempt to displace, with any number 
of readers, or in any degree however inconsiderable, by a pure 
and holy substitute, the monstrous and demoralizing legends of 
pagan worship. 



W. H. Mill. 



Bishop s College, 
Easter, 1831. 



BOOK II. 

THE EARLIER MINISTRY. 



After the ample account of this work contained in the 
Preface to its first book, all that is necessary at present is 
to give an abstract of the contents of the present one, which 
is entitled Putra-abhishekas, The Unction of the Son, and 
comprises our Lord's inauguration to his public office, all the 
acts of his forerunner to the close of his life, and the events 
of his own early ministry down to a period a little more 
recent, that of the feeding of the five thousand. The book 
is divided into twenty-three parts, the contents and authorities 
of which may be thus stated : — 



Canto I. 


Matt. 1 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Duta-preranam. 

[The sending of the Mes- 
senger.] 

Canto II. 




I 1 2 




I 6 










Prdntara-ghosha- 










nam. 










[The Cry in the Wilder- 
ness. 


III. 1—12. 


I. 3-8. 


III. 1—18. 


I. 7, 8. 



I. The disciple requesting the continuation of the history 
of Jesus, the earliest events of which, as described in the 
last book, he briefly recapitulates, the teacher opens with the 
divine commission of John the Baptist, citing at length the 
prophecy of Malachi iii. 1 — 4, and iv. 

II. The appearance and preaching of John the Baptist in 
the wilderness of Jordan ; his address to the people at large, to 
the publicans, and to the soldiers of Herod Antipas (on their 
expedition against Hareth or Aretas) ; closed with a citation of 
the prophecy, Isaiah xl. 3 — 5. 



xliv 



Canto III. 

Aisvara-sanskdras. 

[The Divine Inaugura- 
tion.] 

Canto IV. 

Parixaka-pardjayas. 

[The defeat of the 
Tempter. ] 

Canto V. 

Prabhusdxya-sam- 

vddas. 

[Discourse of testimony 
to the Lord.] 

Canto VI. 

Vivdha-utsava-pra- 
bhdbas. 

[The glory of the mar- 
riage feast.] 

Canto VII. 

I'sa-archaka-vibhd- 
vanam. 

[The distinction of God's 
worshippers.] 



Matt. 



111.13—17. 



IV. 1—11. 



Mark. Luke. 



I. 9—11. 



1 11.21,22. 



1.12,13. IV. 1—13 



John. 



1.15—18. 



I. 19—51. 



ILL— 11. 



11.12—25. 
III. 1—21. 



III. Jesus is baptized, witnessed by the Holy Spirit, and by 
the Father, and pointed out by John. 

IV. The forty days' fast, and temptation in the wilderness. 

V. Consultation of John by the deputation of Levites from 
Jerusalem ; his attestation of Christ to his two disciples, Andrew 
and another, probably John : their following of Jesus ; with the 
subsequent calls of Simon Peter, Philip, and Nathanael. 

VI. The first miracle of Jesus at Cana on his return to Galilee. 

VII. After a short residence at Capernaum, Jesus goes up 
to Jerusalem to the Paschal feast. His several acts there, 



Xlr 



Canto VIII. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Malidjanya-anan- 










dapuranam. 








Ill 22—36 


[The full joy of the Bride- 
groom's friend. 


XIV. 3,4,5. 


VI. 17.20. 


III. 18-20. 


(III. 24.) 


Canto IX. 










Sa m dry a -amr ita - 










upadesanam. 










[Communication to the 
Samaritans of the living 
water of Immortality. 

Canto X. 








IV. 1—42. 










Gdlild-adhibhdsa- 










nam. 










[Illumination of Galilee.] 


IV. 12—17. 


I. 14,15. 


IV. 14, 15, 


IV.43— 54. 



the general incredulity, and the nocturnal conference with 
Nicodemus, are then described, 

VIII. John's last testimony to Jesus at Mnon near Salim — 
with an account of his arrest and imprisonment at Machserus 
that closely followed, by the order of the profligate tetrarch of 
Galilee and Peraea. [Several particulars of the cause are 
supplied from Josephus.] 

IX. Jesus, who had before set out for Galilee, passes through 
Samaria (the fields having already partially assumed the white- 
ness of harvest ; ver. 34.) His conversation with the woman at the 
well of Jacob follows, with the conversion of several Samaritans. 
[A digression is inserted concerning this site of Sichem, and mount 
Gerizim, taken from the books of Genesis and Deuteronomy ; to- 
gether with a relation of the Samaritan rival worship at that place.] 

X. When returned to Galilee, after having at Cana performed 
his second miracle of curing by a word the son of a courtier at 
Capernaum, he proceeds to the lake of Gennesareth, and there 
commences the preaching of the kingdom of God as already 
arrived, agreeably to the prophecy cited from Isaiah ix. 1 — 4. 



xlvi 



Canto XI. 

Nara-sangrahas. 

[The gathering of men. ] 
Canto XII. 

Parvatiya-upadesas. 

[The discourse on the 
Mountain, j 

Canto XIII. 

M6chaha-vdg-ma- 

hdtmyam. 

[The power of the Savi- 
our's word.] 

Canto XIV. 
Durvidhdrtha-su- 
vdrttd., 
[Glad tidings to the poor.] 



Matt. 

IV. 18-25. 

and 
VIII.14— 17. 



V. VI. VII. 



Mark. 

I. 16-39. 



VIII. 1—13. I. 40-45 



XI. 2—19. 



Luke. 

V. l— 11. 

and 
IV. 31— 44. 



V 1.20-49. 



John. 



V. 12—16. 

and 
VII. 1—17. 



VI 1. 18-50. 



XI. He calls Peter, Andrew, James, and John, from their 
nets to be fishers of men ; enters his own city of Capernaum ; 
heals a demoniac in the synagogue on the sabbath ; cures Peter's 
mother-in-law, and in the evening many more ; but retires 
the next mornings to a solitude, where his disciples find him, 
and hear his resolution of preaching in all the cities of Galilee. 

XII. Sermon on the Mount. 

XIII. On his descent from the mount, Jesus heals a leper ; 
entering Capernaum heals at a distance the servant of the good 
Roman centurion ; and proceeding southwards, the next day at 
Nain, he raises to life the dead son of a widow carried out for 
burial. 

XIV. He receives, while yet in his southern progress towards 
Jerusalem, a message of enquiry from John the Baptist in 
prison, which he answers by pointing to his works : and when 
dining (at Nain or at some other city further south) with 
Simon a Pharisee, receives the grateful homage of a woman 
who was a sinner. 



xlvii 



Canto XV. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Daydlaya-pushsha- 
rani. 










[The Pool of the Abode 
of Mercy. 








V 










Canto XVI. 










Vara-dayd-prakdsas. 

[The Declaration of ex- 
cellent mercy.] 


IX. 1—34. 


II. 1—22. 

and 
V. 22—43. 


V. 17—39. 

and 

VIII. 41—56. 




Canto XVII. 










Santa- Vichdra. 

[The gentle Judgment.] 


XII. 1—21. 


II. 23—28. 
and 

III. 1—12. 


VI. 1—11. 
17—19. 







XV. Arrived at Jerusalem to celebrate the second great festival, 
(the Pentecost,) on the Sabbath preceding, he heals an impotent 
man at the pool of Bethesda, ( \ t ™- A«o the abode of mercy ;) 
and in the temple on the next day, the great day of festival, 
vindicates his practice and his divine character against the Jews. 

XVI. Returning immediately after the festival to Caper- 
naum, on the day of his arrival he heals a paralytic let down 
to him from the roof of a house ; calls Matthew or Levi 
the publican ; attends an entertainment of publicans at his 
house ; silences the consequent cavils of the Pharisees ; and 
proceeds thence, on the call of Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, 
to the resuscitation of his daughter, healing others on his way 
and on his return. 

XVII. On the first sabbath after the second great festival of the 
Pentecost,* Jesus accompanied by the twelve walks through the 



* According to the rule of Greek, as of Sanscrit, composition, ^eVTSQO- 
7TOWTO V should mean the secondfirst, i.e. the first of the second series, or the first 
after the second commencement of term or reckoning ; but it cannot well mean 
the converse of these, viz. the first second, or the second of the first series, or the 
second after the first. My interpretation of (raj3j3aTOV (SevTEQOTrawTOV 
is in the main that of Grotius, Maldonat, Hammond, Dodwell, and Pearce. 



xlviii 



Canto XVIII. 

Svargiya-dristanta- 
sdrihas. 

[Series of Heavenly Pa- 
rables.] 

Canto XIX. 

Bhuta-upasarga-da- 

manam. 

[The Conquest of de- 
moniacal possession.] 

Canto XX. 

Sad- Agrachara- 
siraschhaidas. 

[The Decapitation of the 
holy Forerunner.] 



Matt. 



XII. 22-50. 
and 

XIII. 1—52. 



VIII.18— 34. 



IX. 1—35. 

and 

XIV. 6-12. 



Mark. 



Luke. 



VI. 12—16. 
XI. 1—28 
III. 13—35.1X111. 18-21 



and 
IV. 1—34. 



and 
VIII. 4—21. 



IV. 35-41. 

and VIII. 22— 39 
V. 1—20. I (1X.57— 60.) 



V. 21. 

and 
VI. 21—29. 



VIII. 40,1, 2, 
3. 



John. 



then ripe corn-fields, and answers the cavil of the Pharisees. 
In the synagogue he heals a man with a withered hand on 
the Sabbath, and then retires from the pursuit of his exasperated 
enemies to a desert place on the lake, followed by multitudes 
from various places, with respect to his tender treatment of 
whom, " mildly bringing forth judgment to victory," the pro- 
phecy, Isaiah xlii. 1 — 4, is quoted. 

XVIII. Here having designated the twelve as apostles, and 
exhorted them to prayer, he heals a blind and dumb demoniac ; 
refutes the blasphemous objection of the Pharisees, while his 
mother and brethren come to seek him ; and having delivered 
the parable of the sower, with many others, to the assembled mul- 
titude, he explains them afterwards privately to the disciples. 

XIX. The evening of the same day he proposes to cross the 
lake to the opposite coast of Decapolis, stills a storm on the 
lake on the way ; and having healed a demoniac by transferring 
the possession to a herd of swine, at the Gadarenes' entreaty 
he returns. 

XX. He lands among expectant multitudes at Capernaum, 
and thence makes another circuit of the towns and villages 



xhx 




of Galilee. John the Baptist meanwhile is beheaded in his 
prison. (The judgment which closely follows upon this crime, 
in the defeat and destruction of Antipas's army by the king 
whom his profligate marriage with Herodias had justly provoked, 
is then added from Josephus.) 

XXI. Jesus having on his circuit lamented the want of 
labourers for the harvest, commissions and sends forth the 
twelve Apostles with instructions. 

XXII. He then traverses alone the Galilean cities, upbraids 
their unbelief and ingratitude, and thanks the Father for the 
faith of his few simple disciples. He then visits his former city 
of Nazareth, and after convicting its inhabitants of unbelief, 
retires from their exasperation. 

XXIII. Antipas returns to Galilee from Machserus after the 
calamitous issue of the war with his Arabian father-in-law, 
and is alarmed by what he then hears for the first time of the 
fame of Jesus. The twelve returning from their circuit, Jesus 
retires with them to a desert place on the lake, followed by a 



multitude of five thousand, whom he feeds with five loaves and 
two fishes. He sends his disciples away in a boat, himself 
retiring from the multitude, who would make him a king, to 
pray alone. Thence he rejoins his disciples on the sea ; and 
having landed at Capernaum, he discourses with the multitudes, 
who throng to him from the scene of his miracle, on the " true 
bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world." 

Here the teacher closes for the present his narrative of our 
Lord's life and discourses : the disciple expressing, notwith- 
standing the obscurity of this last, his resolution not to imitate 
those who from that time went back and walked no more with 
Jesus ; but rather, like Simon Peter, to disclaim all other 
enquiry as utterly fruitless, and wait to hear more of Him who 
alone " has the words of eternal life." 

It is not possible in this place to enter, otherwise than very 
cursorily, upon the reasons which have determined me, after 
much careful consideration of the views taken by the principal 
harmonists* of the Gospels, to this particular arrangement of 
events. I have scrupulously observed the chronological order 
of all the events related by St. John ; the violation of which by 
referring the memorable event, II. 13 — 22, to the last Passover, 
(when it was repeated with other circumstances,) and transpos- 
ing the fifth and sixth chapters, constitutes the chief objection 
in my mind to the system of Priestley.f The festival in the fifth 



* I regret that, owing to the deficient supply of good theological works to 
India, 1 have not had the opportunity of perusing, during the progress of this 
work, Mr. Greswell's two volumes of Dissertations. The results only are 
before me in his Greek Harmony, from which, as it will be seen, I differ very 
materially. 

f The transposition more recently introduced by Dr. Lant Carpenter — 
which, leaving the rest of St. John untouched, only places the sixth chapter 
after the 54th verse of the eleventh; supposing also the whole of the Gospel 
that remains before X. 21, with its three feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and 
Tabernacles, to precede the first commencement of our Lord's ministry in 
Galilee, as related by the three other Evangelists— is charged with circum- 



li 

chapter (which with him as well as Lyra, Maldonat, Calvin, 
F. Burman, &c. among the moderns, and with Chrysostom, 
Cyril, Theophylact, and others among the ancients, I believe 
to be a Pentecost) cannot be placed, as he has placed it, after the 
miracle of the loaves and fishes (to say nothing of the passage 
VI. 4, a knot which he cuts by supposing the words to Hav^a 
there to be spurious,) without a most improbable crowding * 
of all the events from Matt. IV. 12 to the end of chap. XIV. 
into the seven weeks that elapsed between the first two great 
festivals of our Saviour's ministry : an objection which certainly 
does not apply to the much smaller number of events assigned 
to that interval in Articles 8 — 14, of the accompanying scheme: 
while the opposite improbability is there avoided, of expanding 
the same few events to the space of a whole year, from one 
Passover to another. 

This festival, (whether it be a Pentecost or any other,) being 
thus assigned to some place between the first preaching in Galilee 
and the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes, and consequently 
between the yet closer limits of Matt. VIII. 1 and XIV. 1 — it 



stances of far greater improbability than that of Priestley. Neither does it 
serve the purpose for which it was devised, of verifying the difficult verse, VI. 
4. An anniversary celebration can in no ordinary mode of speech be said to be 
"nigh," when an extensive journey to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, with 
all the other journeys and events of Matt. XV — XX. inclusive, with some 
superadded ones in Luke IX, XIII, and XIX, (all which necessarily precede, 
even in this system, the limit of John XI. 55,) had to be dispatched, not only 
before its arrival, but before it is said to be "nigh at hand" (again?) in the 
same Gospel. 

* One principal argument of Priestley for this crowding,— from the impro- 
bability of a longer time than five or six weeks elapsing before Herod Antipas 
heard the fame of Jesus' miracles in his own tetrarchy of Galilee, — is removed 
by the fact of his being at Peraea during the latter days of John the Baptist, 
and by the distractions of his Arabian war at that time, as related by Josephus, 
(Antiq. xviii. c. 5) which I have accordingly incorporated into the history in 
Articles 2, 8, and 20. 

H 



Hi 

seems most natural and probable to connect with our Saviour's 
journey from Galilee to that celebration, the miracle in the south- 
ern city of Nain, (occurring as it did on the day after the heal- 
ing of the centurion's servant at Capernaum, told in Matt. VIII.) 
as well as the message of John the Baptist from his prison in 
Persea, with the other events related in St. Luke's seventh chapter. 
In this I coincide with Professor Hug, in his Introduction to the 
New Testament, as well as with an earlier author to whom the 
same idea had occurred, F. Burman in his Harmony. (See Lampe 
on John V. 1.) As St. Luke is the sole narrator of many of the 
events of that chapter, and is by far the most circumstantially 
accurate in the history of the centurion at its commencement, 
to which he connects the rest by an unbroken chain, — a prefer- 
ence in the order of these events (which preceded* the call of 
St. Matthew) may be not improbably given to him ; though 
nothing appears to me more contrary to the evident and generally 
acknowledged phcenomena of the case than the opinion advanced 
by the above-mentioned learned and ingenious Professor, that St. 
Luke wrote to correct the chronology of St. Matthew and St. 
Mark, or indeed that his order of time can in general compete with 



* This is undisputed respecting all before the message of John the Baptist 
in ver. 19. And respecting this it is very observable that St. Matthew relates 
it as a detached event, immediately after he had mentioned his own absence 
and that of the twelve, from Jesus, (XI. 1, 2,)— thus expressly excluding it 
from the transactions which he personally witnessed. From the events that 
preceded and followed, viz. the miracle at Nain and the entertainment of 
Simon the Pharisee, the absence of the Apostles may be inferred from St. 
Luke's narration, (who may have been himself among the "many disciples" 
VII. 11. that followed our Lord on the high road from Galilee to Jerusalem 
on this occasion.) May not our Saviour's ascending to this feast of Pentecost 
and others without his usual attendants, derive some illustration from what is 
told afterwards in John VII. 8, 9, 10. of his mode of going to Jerusalem on a 
like occasion, and thus account for the entire silence of the two first Evange- 
lists respecting these journeys ? 



liii 

theirs.* It is strangely inconsistent with this opinion that Hug 
should imagine the supper at the end of this very chapter, Luke 
VII. to be the samef with that of Bethany before the Passion, 
related by all the three other Evangelists, and of coarse there- 
fore antedated by St. Luke only. Equally improbable is his 
opinion that thej festival of John V. is the comparatively civil 
feast of Purim, which might be kept by the Jews in their own 



* The apostleship of St. Matthew, and the extensive connexion of St. Mark 
with the earliest witnesses of the Gospel, particularly with St. Peter, are 
traceable in their mode of narrating events : while St. Luke's memoirs have 
all the appearance of being subsequently collected from various sources, (I. 1, 
2,) and put together with much regard indeed to the order of the subject, but 
little to chronology. The attempt of the learned Griesbach (Opuscula Acade- 
rnica) to prove St. Mark's Gospel a sort of alternate compilation from St. 
Matthew and St. Luke, though singularly agreeable to many phenomena of 
the case, is quite irreconcilable with others, and cannot stand against the 
reasons which Townson and Hug have severally advanced both for the inde- 
pendence of its testimony, and its order in the books of the New Testament. 

f The arguments for this identity are very ably stated by Schleiermacher, 
in his Essay on St. Luke's Gospel, (p. 116 — 120, of Thirlwall's translation;) 
but they will scarcely prevail with any one whose regard for the literal cor- 
rectness of the Evangelists happily exceeds that of the profound translator of 
Plato. 

% The preceding events (extended by others to the still further period of 
the Passover shortly following, which Hug's reasons, P. II. qh. 2, &. 56. 
sufficiently exclude)' are thus stretched to the Purim feast by means of the sup- 
position that our Lord's residence in the neighbourhood of John the Baptist, at 
jEnon near Salim, (John III. 22 — IV. 1.) occupied eight months. Thus the 
journey through Samaria is made to fall at a period "four months before 
harvest," according to the supposed import of IV. 35 ; (though, as Benson 
and others justly remark, this use of a probably proverbial expression in the 
former half of the verse, does not argue so strongly for the month of December 
or January, as the conclusion of the verse does for a season when the fields 
were already whitening for the harvest — i. e. between the Paschal and Pente- 
cost solemnities.) But I do not see it explained by Hug, how at a time of the 
year between this and the feast of Purim, to which his system brings the event 
of Luke VI. 1, i. e. in February, or at the latest early in March, the corn 
could be fully ripe in the fields — putting the interpretation of GiippaTOV 
^>tVT£p6irQb)TOV out of the question. 



liv 

cities, (Esther IX. 27.28.) and had no special connexion whatever 
with Jerusalem or its temple. 

The closely connected series of inseparable events which 
occupy the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of St. Matthew, and 
from II. 23, to IV. 34, 35, in the following Gospel, and to which 
the last-mentioned verse of St. Mark requires that we must 
attach likewise the crossing over the lake to Decapolis and the 
miracle of the swine, (though these last events are placed by St. 
Matthew some time before, viz. just preceding his own con- 
version,) will thus follow almost immediately on the above fes- 
tival of John V. as they are placed in our Articles 17, 18, 19. 
The full ripeness of the corn-fields at the commencement of 
this series of events, as well as the words of St. Luke, (with 
whom, however, some leading events and discourses of the 
series are singularly dispersed* into various parts of his Gospel,) 
direct us, indeed, plainly to the first Sabbathf after the Pentecost 
as the initial date. Still the succession is not quite imme- 
diate; for the call of St. Matthew must have preceded these 
events, in which all the twelve are concerned, and therefore 
most probably preceded them immediately, (as the unbroken 
narration throughout, Mark II. as well as in Luke V. 17, — VI. 1 1, 
seems to indicate,) and thus intervened between the Pentecost 
and its next following Sabbath, as placed in our Article 16. 
And since this Evangelist and Apostle cannot but be deem- 



* See the foregoing table, Art. 18. That the remarks and replies of Luke 
"VI. 1. 29, 21, and those of XI. 27, 28, were both suggested by one and the same 
event, viz. the coming of the mother of Jesus to the door of the house where 
he was delivering the discourse mentioned in the latter of these places, i. e. 
the discourse on the relapsed demoniac, — though the event itself is only 
related in the former, — will appear in the highest degree probable to any one 
who will carefully compare both passages in all their circumstances with the 
continuous accounts given by St. Matthew and St. Mark of that discourse 
as thus interrupted, and succeeded by the parable of the sower, &c. with a 
voyage following. 

f Luke VI. 1. See the note on Art. 17. (p. v. sup.) 



lv 

ed the first authority in what took place at the entertainment 
he gave our Lord, at this most interesting period of his whole 
life, we must therefore assign to this date (much earlier than 
where St. Mark and St. Luke place it) the call of Jairus and 
the resuscitation of his daughter ; though this conclusion, to 
which St. Matthew's testimony thus compels us, leads to the 
abandonment of another point in which all the three Evangelists 
seem to coincide, i. e. making the miracle at the house of Jairus 
to fall upon the same day with the return from Gadara. fJFor 
this point could not possibly be consulted, without denying 
either Matt. IX. 18, on the one hand, or Mark IV. 35, on 
the other ; — or else departing from the united testimony of 
all the three in a still more glaring manner.] 

On these points, which constitute the chief though not the 
only difficulties of harmonizing the earlier parts of the evangeli- 
cal history, I have thus briefly indicated some of the princi- 
pal reasons for the order I have adopted, without entering into 
a discussion which could not be here terminated or even con- 
ducted satisfactorily. The difficulties in question affect the ar- 
rangement of our Articles 11 — 22; for as to what precedes, 
the comparison of St. John* with the other Evangelists scarcely 
admits any other possible arrangement than that which I have 
followed in Articles 1 — 10 : and immediately following, in Arti- 
cle 23, we have a cardinal point, in which alone of all events 
between the baptism and the passion, all the four Evange- 
lists meet, — the feeding of the five thousand. This circum- 



* To such as might suspect a misunderstanding of John I. 39, IV. 6, and 
52, it may not be useless to mention that I have adopted, as the most pro- 
bable interpretation of these and other passages of the same Gospel, the 
opinion that St. John computes the hours of the day, not after the Jewish 
or the Roman, but after the Macedonian manner; an opinion which his 
residence at Ephesus, and the other arguments so ably urged by Dr. Town- 
son, render almost certain. (Works, vol. i. p. 233 — 273.) 



lvi 

stance, as well as the apparently exact chronological division,* 
and other considerations, mark the miracle of the feeding and 
the spiritual discourse that followed, as the most appropriate 
termination of the present portion of the Christa- Sangitd. 

After this cardinal point, which closes the first six chapters of 
St. John and St. Mark, and the first fourteen of St. Matthew, — 
the difficulties of adjusting with the two first Evangelists the 
several narrations of St. Luke and of St. John are entirely new, 
and of a somewhat different kind from the preceding. These 
properly form the subject of consideration in the preparation 
of the next book, the Sat-pdlaka-charitram, extending to the 
last Passover. The death and the resurrection, with their at- 
tendant and following circumstances, will form a subsequent 
book of themselves, entitled Moktri-mdhdtmyam. Both of these 
I hope, with the Divine blessing, to produce in much shorter 
intervals of time than that which has from various causes sepa- 
rated the publication of this book and that of its predecessor. 
W. H. M. 

* The duration of the events both of the present book and its successor 
may be conceived to be a little more than a year each; viz. from the winter 
before our Lord's first public Passover in John II. 11, to a period shortly 
preceding another Passover, VI. 4, (otherwise unnoticed,) for the present 
book ; and thence to the Passover of the following year, XII. 1, for the next. 
That our Saviour's ministry (excluding the three months from his baptism to 
his first Passover) did not extend beyond two years, is my decided conviction 
from the narration of all the Evangelists. And I own that but for the otherwise 
inexplicable verse in the sixth chapter, alluding to an intermediate Passover 
between those of the second and the twelfth ; — my impression from the 
consecutive festivals which are alone recorded by St. John during that in- 
terval, viz. the probable Pentecost of the fifth chapter, the Feast of Taber- 
nacles of the seventh and following, and the Encaenia of the tenth, — when 
taken in conjunction with the Galilean histories of St. Matthew and St. 
Mark, and the more detached memoirs preserved by the third Evangelist, 
concerning Him who came to fulfil all the righteousness of the law. and 
therefore could not have omitted celebrating at Jerusalem any of the three 
great festivals that recurred during his ministry, — would determine me 
altogether to the common ancient opinion that one year (with the three 
months above mentioned) included the whole. 



BOOK III. 

THE LATER MINISTRY. 



This third part of the Sanscrit History of Our Lord is called 
Sdt-pdlaka-charitram ; The Acts of the Good Shepherd ; and 
extends from the period of feeding the five thousand, to his 
arrival at Bethany six days before the Passover in which he 
suffered. Like the former, it is divided into twenty- three 
cantos ; the contents of which are as follow. 



Canto I. 

Parichdraka-gana 

nirydnam. 

[The going forth of the 
troop of Ministers.] 




Luke. 



X. 1—16. 



John. 



VII. 1. 



1. The teacher having opened with an address of praise for 
the Divine power and heavenly discourses of Jesus Christ, as 
declared in the preceding book, is requested by the disciple to 
continue the history, and thus to unfold how He whose ministry 
was thus auspiciously commenced was to realize the mysterious 
meaning of the last-mentioned discourse in John vi. He replies, 
in the words of the verse following, (vii. 1.) that Jesus had yet 
much time to spend in Galilee, and returned not yet to Jeru- 
salem where his life was threatened : but as his progress towards 
the consummation of all in that holy city was to be the chief 
subject of the present book, as the Galilean ministry was of the 
former, — the sending forth of the seventy disciples to those cities 
of Judea where he should himself hereafter come is now related 
from the beginning of St. Luke's 10th chapter ; (so as not to dis- 
turb the continuity of the narration of Matt. xv. xvi. xvii. xviii. 
and Mark vii. viii. ix. to the latter part of which, contained in 
Luke ix. 18 — 50, the last named evangelist immediately annexes 
that journey of our Lord to Jerusalem in which the seventy 
returned to meet him.) 



lx 



Canto II. 

Vhdya-dharma- 
nirasanam. 

[Rejection of mere out- 
ward Religion.] 

Canto III. 

Bhaxya-avaseshas. 

[Remnant of the food (pro- 
vided for the children of 
Israel )] 

Canto IV. 

Khristiya-ma ndali - 

nirmdna-prastaras. 

[The Rock on which the 
Christian Church is 
founded.] 



Matt. 



XV. 1— '20. 



XV.2I— 39. 

and 
XVI. 1—12. 



Mark. 



VII. 1-23. 



VI 1.24—37. 

and 
VIII. 1—26 




IVIII27-33 
XVI. 13-2S.1 and IX. 1. IX. 18—27. 



II. Commencing therefore that series of events, (between the 
two instances of miraculous feeding,) on which St. Luke is 
silent, the teacher relates the remarkable conversation with 
Pharisees from Jerusalem respecting ceremonial religion which 
immediately preceded the journey to the borders of Tyre and 
Sidon. 

III. Then are related the principal circumstances of that 
journey ; the faith of the Syrophcenician woman and its reward ; 
the healing of the dumb man on our Lord's return on the 
Decapolitan side of the lake of Gennesareth ; the feeding of the 
four thousand with seven loaves and a few fishes ; his answer 
to the tempting Pharisees and Sadducees, who sought a sign 
from heaven ; his caution of the disciples against their leaven or 
spirit ; and the miracle on the blind man at Bethsaida, accompa- 
nied, like the rest during the journey, with a charge of secresy. 

IV. When in the parts of Caesarea Philippi our Lord receives 
the memorable confession of Simon Peter, delivers to him, as 
head of the College of Apostles, his promise concerning the 
Church, and then speaks of his approaching sufferings. 



Jxi 



Matt. 



Canto V. 

Ptitra-aisvarya-ava- 
bhdsanam. 

[Effulgence of the Son's 
Divinity.] 

Canto VI. 

Sishya-mala-niro- 
dhas. 

[Prevention of faults or 
defilements in the (lis 
ciples. 

Canto VII. 

Sdnta-dharma-pro- 
sansd. 



[ Praise of meek religion. ] ! — 



Mark. 



XVII. 1— 13 IX. 2—13. 



XVII. 14-27 

and 

XVIII. tot. IX. 14-50. 



Lukt 



IX. 28-36. 



IX. 37—50. 



IX. 51—62. 
and 

X. 17—42 



Joim. 



VII. 2—10. 



V. With Peter, James, and John, he ascends mount Tabor, 
where he converses in glory with Moses and Elias : and de- 
scending, charges his three principal apostles to be silent on this 
transfiguration till after his resurrection from the dead. 

VI. On his descent, he heals a possessed child whom the nine 
remaining apostles could not cure ; rebukes their want of faith ; 
and (when arrived at Capernaum, where he also works a miracle 
to pay the sacred tax of the didrachma,) condemns the con- 
tentious spirit manifested by the whole on their journey, exhort- 
ing them to humility and forgiveness. 

VII. The feast of Tabernacles approaching, Jesus is urged by 
his brethren to go to Jerusalem ; but declines going thither, till 
after the usual company of Galileans have flocked to the fes- 
tival. Then proceeding thither with his disciples only, he re- 
bukes the zeal of James and John, called forth by the refusal of 
a Samaritan village to receive him because his face was set 
to go towards Jerusalem ; and apprises some who would after- 
wards join him, of the extent of their undertaking. Having 
arrived at Judea, and on the road between Jericho and Jeru- 



ixn 



Canto VIII. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Mukty-dkara-para- 










darsanam. 

[Display of the Fountain 
of Salvation.] 

Canto IX. 








VII. 11— 53. 
and 

VIII. 1 — 11- 








Jagat-prakdsas, 
[The Light of the Word.] 








VIII. 12-59. 

IX. tot. and 
X 12 1 









salem, the seventy meet him and report the success of their mis- 
sion: in answer to the question of a lawyer, he there relates 
the parable of the good Samaritan : and finally arrives at 
Bethany on that road, the village of Martha and Mary ; at whose 
house he sojourns previously to his secret entrance to Jerusalem. 
The contrasted behaviour of the sisters is then related. 

VIII. Jesus suddenly appears in the temple in the midst of 
the feast of Tabernacles, and teaches. The rulers attempt to 
apprehend him, but their messengers dare not execute their 
order : Nicodemus defends him, but feebly, in their council. 
The morning after the great day of the festival, (the ceremonies 
of which are described, in order to shew the signincancy of our 
Lord's symbolical discourse on that day), — the preceding night 
having been passed on the mount of Olives, at the house of 
Martha, — he hears in the temple the case of the woman taken 
in adultery. 

IX. Jesus again proclaims himself in the temple to be the 
Light of the world : and argues his cause with the questioning 
Jews, who end by attempting to stone him for blasphemy. 
Having escaped from their hands, he heals a blind man on the 
Sabbath ; which affords new matter for debate among his ene- 
mies. He proclaims himself as the good Shepherd, and the only 
door of the sheep. 



Ixiii 



Canto X. 

Lobha-adi-virodha- 

nam. 

[Rebuke of eovetousness 
and other vices.] 

Canto XL 

Ndsa-nivdrana-hita- 

samaya-ddesas. 

[Prescription of the right 
time for escaping destruc- 
tion.] 

Canto XII. 

Galild-antima-bhra 

manam. 

[The last circuit of Gali- 
lee.! 



Matt. 



Mark. 



Luke. Jolm. 



XI. 34—54. 
and 

XII. 1—53. 



XII. 54—59. 

and 
XIII. 1—9. 



XIII. 10-35. 



X. While repeating (probably after his return to Galilee) his 
discourse on keeping the eye single, he is invited to dine with 
a Pharisee, when the censure of a ceremonial omission gives oc- 
casion for a rebuke of the errors and hypocrisy of that sect. 
He afterwards warns the multitudes against them. He rebukes 
eovetousness by the history of a godless speculator for futurity, 
and exhorts his followers to watchfulness. 

XL He discourses to the people on the signs of the times ; 
and, after hearing of the Galileans slain in the temple by Pilate, 
he warns against a rash interpretation of the Divine judgments, 
and exhorts to personal repentance by the parable of the barren 
fig-tree. 

XII. In a synagogue of Galilee on the Sabbath-day he cures 
a woman of a chronic infirmity, and rebukes the hypocrisy of 
the president, who would censure the act : he answers those who 
inquire as to the number of the saved, by an exhortation to 
strive to be among them : and when an artful representation is 
made by some Pharisaic emissaries of Antipas to induce him to 
fly from the territories of the tetrarch to avoid death, he answers 
that he has yet to wander a while in that country ; but that 



lxiv 



Canto XIII. 

I' svara-dhvdnam. 

[The Invitation of God.] 

Canto XIV. 

Apachita-dpti-har- 

shas. 

[The joy of finding the 
lost. ] 

Canto XV. 

Visvasta-bh ritya •• 

sad- dhanam . 

[The true riches of faithful 
servants.] 



Matt. 



Mark. ; Luke. John 



XIV. tot. 



XV. tot. 



XVI. tot. 

and 

XVII. 1—10. 



he cannot perish, as a prophet, out of Jerusalem : where he 
intimates that the Galilean multitudes should shortly after 
precede him with acclamations as the Messiah. 

XIII. At an entertainment given him by a Pharisee during 
his last progress in Galilee, he discourses concerning modesty 
and charity in entertainments, and declares by a parable how 
the invitation to the heavenly feast is evaded and rejected : also 
to the multitudes that follow him, he declares what is required 
of his followers. 

XIV. To those who censure his condescension to publicans 
and sinners, he alleges the practice of men with respect to a 
lost sheep, or any other possession ; and discourses on the joy in 
heaven over the recovery of the lost among mankind, illustrating 
the same truth further by the parable of the prodigal son. 

XV. He relates the parable of the unjust steward ; and after- 
wards, when the covetous Pharisees deride his doctrine, that 
of the rich man and Lazarus : he inculcates also the avoiding of 
scandals, the forgiveness of injuries, faith in God's promises, and 
the renunciation of all claim of merit before Him. 



I XV 



Canto XVI. 

Sat-prurihand-vive- 
kas. 

[The discernment of right 
prayers.] 

Canto XVII. 

Pitri- Putra-ekatva- 
upudesas. 

[Declaration of the One- 
ness of the Father and 
the Son.] 

Canto XVIII. 

Nirmala-rdjya-sus- 
anam. 

[The discipline of the king- 
dom of purity. ] 



Matt. Mark. 



XIX.l— 15. X. 1—16. 



Luke. 



XVII. 11—37. 
and 

XVIII. 1-14. 



XVIII. 15, 

16, 17. 



John. 



X. 22-39. 



X. 39-42. 



XVI. Going from Galilee towards Jerusalem, his way lying 
through the borders of Samaria, he heals ten lepers, one of 
whom only evinces gratitude, and he a stranger. When ap- 
proaching nearer to the holy city, he answers the inquiry of 
some Pharisees, by describing the sudden coming of God's king- 
dom ; and exhorts severally to earnestness and humility in 
prayer by the two parables of the unjust judge, and of the 
Pharisee and publican. 

XVII. Having arrived at Jerusalem in the winter, at the 
feast of the Encaenia, he answers the Jews who urge him to 
declare whether he is the Christ or not, by reproaching them 
with their unbelief, and asserting his own unity with the 
Father. They again attempt to stone him for blasphemy, 
notwithstanding the allegation of Ps. lxxxii , but he escapes out 
of their hands. 

XVIII. Hence, having finally left Galilee, he passes over to 
Peraea, where many who remember John's baptism in that 
place, now believe on him as the object of the Baptist's preach- 
ing. Here in answer to the questions of some Pharisees, he 



Ixvi 



Canto XIX. 

Visishta-alpatva- 
updkhydnam. 

[Announcement of the 
paucity of the elect.] 

Canto XX. 

Mrityu-vijaya-dar- 
sanam. 

[Specimen of the conquest 
of death.] 

Canto XXI. 

Bharya-mrityu-su- 
chanam. 

[Information of the death 
at hand.] 

Canto XXII. 

Andha- ddi-vimuktis . 

[Deliverance of the blind 
and others.] 



Matt. Mark 



XIX. 16-30. 

XX. 1-16. X. 17—31. 



XX. 17-28. 



XX. 29-34. 



Luke. John 



XVIII. 18- 
30. 



XI. 1—54. 



X. 32—45. 



X. 46-52. 



XVIII. 36. 

48! 

XIX.l— 10. 



XI. 55, 56, 
57. 



declares the strictness of the Divine precept concerning mar- 
riage : and blesses the little children who are brought to him. 

XIX. A young ruler coming to Jesus, is repelled by the 
direction to forsake all for him. After enlarging from this 
example on the danger of riches, he tells the parable of the 
labourers in the vineyard. 

XX. Receiving at Peraga, a message from the sisters at Beth- 
any, that their brother Lazarus is sick — he, after a purposed de- 
lay of two days proceeds thither, and raises him from the grave, 
when he had been three days dead. The Pharisees consulting 
upon this, resolve on the death of Jesus : while he retires to a 
city called Ephraim, and there abides with his disciples. 

XXI. After announcing to his disciples his approaching end 
at Jerusalem, and rebuking the ambitious proposal of the sons of 
Zebedee, he proceeds thither by way of Jericho. 

XXII. When at Jericho, in the suburbs of the city, he re- 



lxvii 



Canto XXIII. 
Ydtrd seshas. 

[End of the journey (to 

the precincts of the holy 

city.)] 



Matt. 



(XXI. I.) 




Luke. 



XIX. 11-29. 



John. 



(XII. 1.) 



stores sight to two blind men, Bartimseus and another : he after- 
wards dines at the house of the chief publican Zacchaeus, and 
replies to his profession of exemplary charity and restitution, by 
declaring that salvation is come to his house. 

XXIII. On the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, our Lord to 
repress his disciples' expectation of the immediate manifestation 
of his kingdom, relates the parable of a nobleman going to a 
distant country to receive a kingdom — 'the rebellious conduct of 
the citizens in his absence — and the various degrees of fidelity 
in his immediate servants,. — with various dooms pronounced on 
each : after which he arrives shortly after the Passover at 
Bethany, within two miles of the holy city, which closes the 
narration of this book. The disciple expressing curiosity to 
know what is the journey that the Christ has yet to take, before 
he receives his great power and glory, — is answered that the 
events he has yet to relate respecting the death and resurrection 
of the Lord will declare its meaning. In the mean time the ne- 
cessity for his cross and passion as the entrance on his subse- 
quent conquest of the world, is declared by a translation in 
Hindu elegiac measure, of the whole of the 53d chapter of Isaiah, 
in which the prophetic spirit graphically depicts these events 
and their results on the mind of the bard of Isreal. 



BOOK IV. 

THE PASSION AND GLORIFICATION. 



This last part of the Sanscrit Christiad is termed Moktri- 
mdhdtmyam, or The Majesty of the Redeemer, — and though 
the shortest in its period of time of all (excepting only the mere 
sketch of Christian history in the twentieth canto), embracing 
only the eight weeks from the eve of Palm Sunday to that of 
Whit Sunday in the year of our Lord's passion — is nearly double 
in length of its predecessors. It is divided into twenty-one 
cantos, whose contents are as follow. 



Canto I. 


Matt, 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Mumurshu-daiha. 










abhyanjanam. 










[The anointing of the bo- 
dy of Him who was to die.] 


XXVI. 6—14. 
XXI. 1—7. 


XIV. 3— 10. 
XI. 1—7. 


XIX. 29- 
35. 


XII.1-16. 



I. The disciple begins by asking how the Good Shepherd who 
was to lay down his life for the sheep, and had power to take it 
again, could realize the striking but apparently incompatible des- 
criptions of meanness and majesty, of rejection and final triumph, 
which were contained in the last quotation from the evangelical 
prophet, He therefore requests the teacher — who had pursued 
the acts of the good Shepherd to his last journey to Jerusalem for 
that purpose, excepting the last short stage from Bethany — to 
complete now the history which is alone wanting for the full 
elucidation of that great prophecy. The teacher, after stating 
that Christ was to enter as a King to his own holy city, relates 
now the single circumstance that preceded it at Bethany : viz. 
the supper on the Saturday evening, which was the octave 
before his burial, when Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anointed his 
body with precious ointment, and received, with the murmuring 
rebuke of Judas, the signal commendation of our Lord. The 



IXX11 



Canto II. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Sad- raja-pravesas. 










[The entrance of the Holy 
King.] 


XXI. 8—11. 
14—17. 


XI. 8—11. 


XIX. 36— 

44. 


XII. 17, 18, 
19. 


Canto III. 










Sarvanvaya-prar- 
thanalaya-sodha- 










■nam. 












XXI. 12, 13, 

18, 19. 


XI. 12-19. 


XIX. 45— 

48. 




of prayer for all nations.] 





treachery of Judas, conceived apparently from that moment, 
though not executed till the Wednesday following (with the 
relation of which accordingly, St. Matthew and St. Mark con- 
nect the narration of this incident) having been now alluded to, 
the preparation of our Lord for his entry of lowly triumph to 
Jerusalem is related, in fulfilment of the ancient prophecy, 
Zech. ix. 9. 

II. Palm Sunday. Christ enters on an ass from the mount 
of Olives to Jerusalem, while the multitudes precede and 
follow him with Hosannas fcO rU^tiHil,* — and with the other 
expressions of Psalm cxviii. 24, 25, hailing him as the long 
expected heir of David's throne. The Pharisees in vain at- 
tempt to repress this expression of homage echoed in the streets 
of the city and even in the courts of the temple, from the mouths 
of the very youngest children. Our Saviour having quoted 
Psalm viii. to them, and looked around the temple, it being then 
late in the evening, returns to Bethany with his disciples. 

III. Monday before Easter. On his way to the temple on 
the following morning Christ curses a barren fig-tree — and 
having arrived there, cleanses the outward precinct of his 



So we read this precise use of a sup- 



pttcating term as an expression of worship and gratulation in the liama- 
yana I. canto 36. si. 24. 



Ixxiii 



Canto IV. 

Saddhantri-manda- 

gura -parajayas . 

[JDefect of the evil teach- 
ers, murderers of the 
good.] 



Matt. 



Mark. 



XXI. 20-46. XI. 20-33. 

XXII. 

XXIII. XII. 1-40. 



Luke. 



XX. 



John. 



Father's house, the court of the Gentiles, which they had con- 
verted in Jeremiah's language to a den of robbers, by expelling 
the traffickers that desecrated it ; citing the words of Isaiah, 
that his house should be a house of prayer for all nations : 
after which he again returns to Bethany in the evening. 

IV. Tuesday before Easter „• morning. On the return to 
Jerusalem, the disciples wonder at the fig-tree that had withered 
after yesterday's malediction, and are exhorted to faith in God 
in their future ministry. The chief priests and Pharisees in 
the temple inquiring by what authority he acted there in the 
transactions of the two preceding days, are confounded by the 
counter question respecting John's baptism — and yet more by 
the example of the two sons, by the parable of the husbandmen 
in the vineyard, which he points directly against themselves, and 
that of the ungrateful and murderous subjects who rejected 
their king's invitation to the marriage feast of his son. Their 
attempt to ensnare him by inquiring into the lawfulness of 
paying tribute to Caesar, is signally defeated : as is that of the 
Sadducees to confound him respecting the doctrine of the resur- 
rection : and having answered a lawyer's inquiry respecting the 
first commandment in the Law, he in his turn questions the 
Pharisees in a manner that they are unable to answer, respecting 
the relation of Christ to David in Psalm ex. 1. Having thus 
silenced these wicked teachers, he explicitly warns his followers 
against their covetousness, hypocrisy, and false teaching — de- 
scribing the judgments of God impending over them for their 
iniquities, now about to reach their full. 



Ixxiv 



Canto V. 

Nara-putra-dvitiya- 

dgamana-ddesas. 

[Proclamation of the Son 
of Man's second coming.] 

Canto VI. 

Abhiskta-ghdta-kd- 

la-prastutis. 

[Arrangement of the time 
for the slaying of the 
Messiah.] 



Matt. 

XXIV. 
XXV. 



Mark. 



XII. 41- 



44. 



XIII. 



XXVI.l— 5,'XIV. 1, 2, 
14,15,16.1 10,11. 



Luke. 



XXI. 



John. 



XXII. 1-6. XII. 20— 50. 



V. Tuesday evening. When about to leave the temple after 
this invective, Jesus notices and commends the chanty of a poor 
widow : and to the disciples admiring on their departure the 
stately buildings that surrounded them, he announces their com- 
ing destruction. Then on the mount of Olives, while seated op- 
posite to the temple, in reply to the question of four disciples — he 
speaks at length of the doom of Jerusalem and of the coming of 
the Son of Man : and to exhort them to watchfulness in looking 
for his second coming, he relates the parable of the ten virgins, 
and of the servants with several talents entrusted to them : con- 
cluding with an awful description of the final judgment. 

VI. Wednesday before Easter. Our Lord announces to his 
disciples that it is yet two days to the Paschal Feast, when he 
should be delivered into the hands of sinners. This event 
(which according to the most constant tradition of antiquity, I 
have assigned to A. D. 29 of the vulgar era, or A. U. C. 781, when 
Rubellius Germinus and Rusius Germinus were consuls — in 
which the Paschal full moon that marked the 14th day of the 
month Abib falls agreeably to the Jewish modes of computation 
on Friday the 18th of March 6h. 491m. p. m., — which is the 
full moon of the Chastra that closes the 85th year of Vicrama- 
detya) is now prepared by Judas covenanting with the chief 
priests to betray his Master in the absence of the multitude. 
Then follows the relation of that remarkable visit to the temple, 



I XXV 



Canto VII. 
Sad-bhqjana-dsir- 

vddas. 

[Blessing of the Holy 
Supper.] 

Canto VIII. 
Mahd-madhyastha- 

charama-upadesas. 

[La^t Discourse of the 
Great Mediator.] 



Matt. 



XXVI. 17— 

30. 



XXVI. 31— 
35. 



Mark. Luke. John. 



XIV. 12— XXII, 7- 
26.1 39. 



XIV. 27—; 
31.1 



XIII. XIV. 



XV. XVI. 
XVII. 



recorded by St. John, at which some proselytes desire to see 
Jesus, and where he makes to his obstinate hearers in that sacred 
place the declaration confirmed by a sign from heaven, of his 
approaching passion and glorification, and his apparently final 
admonition of the consequences of rejecting him. — Here the 
teacher introduces the quotation of the great prophecy so often 
alluded to, of Daniel, respecting the period of this great catastro- 
phe : the commencement of the 70 hebdomads of years being 
placed at the renewed edict of Darius Nothus for the rebuilding of 
the temple, which had been suspended from the time of Artaxerxes 
Longimanus, son of Ahasuerus or Xerxes — and the conclusion at 
the destruction of Jerusalem a. d. 71, after the Messiah or 
Prince had been cut off, as a sacrifice for human iniquity. 

VII. Thursday before Easter. The transactions of this 
memorable day are opened by the mission of Peter and John to 
Jerusalem, and the preparation of the Paschal supper in a cham- 
ber there : which having been duly celebrated by our Lord with- 
in the prescribed period, viz. after the sunset at which the 14th of 
Abib or Nisan commenced, and concluded with an affecting ex- 
ample of His condescending humility, — he institutes the ever- 
blessed Sacrament of his body and blood. Then after Judas's 
hasty departure to the chief priests, he renews his exhortation 
to Peter and the other disciples, until long after night-fall, he 
proposes to arise and leave that place. 

VIII. Maundy- Thrusdny continued. On the way to the 



lxxvi 



Canto IX. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


Udydniya-vyatha- 










nam. 










[The Agony in the Gar- 
den.] 


XXVI. 36— 

56. 


XIV. 32— 

52. 


XXII. 39— 

53. 


XVIII.l- 

12. 


Canto X. 










Vara-upala-nird- 










hritis. 

[The rejection of the true 
Corner-stone.] 


XXVI.57— 

75. 
XXVII. 1.2, 


XIV. 53,72. 
XV. 1. 


XXII. 54— 

71. 

xxiii. i. 


XVIII. 

13—28. 



mount of Olives, Jesus predicts his approaching desertion by 
all the apostles on this fatal night : and answers the contrary 
protestation of Simon Peter, by announcing his aggravated denial. 
He then resumes his discourse of exhortation and consolation to 
them all : closing with a prayer of intercession for them, and for 
his whole Church. 

IX. The same evening continued. Having crossed the brook 
Kedron towards the mount of Olives, he enters the garden of 
Gethsemane, where having commanded his disciples — Peter, 
James, and John especially — to watch with him, he is seized with 
an agony of spirit in the contemplation of his future sufferings 
for men, which he overrules by prayer and resignation — while 
his disciples sleep. Here he is found by a band sent by the 
chief priests, guided by the traitor Judas ; is seized and 
bound, deserted by all his followers, and led to Jerusalem. 

X. Good- Friday— from I to 5 a. m. Having been taken to 
the house of Annas and thence to that of Caiaphas, — he is exa- 
mined by his implacable enemies — denied by Peter — declared 
by the chief priests guilty of blasphemy, for declaring himself 
the Son of the Blessed who will judge the world — condemned, 
insulted, and treated with cruel indignity : at length at dawn 
he is conducted from the high priest's house to the residence of 
the Roman governor. 



Ixxvii 



Canto XI. 

Pdpi- haste- Prabhu- 

nb arpanam. 

[The delivery of the Lord 
into the hand of sinners.] 

Canto XII. 

Mahd-ynjua-sampu- 
ranam. 

[Completion of the great 
Sacrifice.] 



Matt. Mark. Luke 



XXVII. 2- 
31, 



XXVII.31— 
56. 



XV. 1—20. 



XV. 20—47, 



XXIII. 1- 



25, 



XXII 1.26- 
49, 



John. 



XVIII. 

28—40. 
XIX.1-16. 



XIX. 16— 

30. 



XI. Good-Friday morning continued—from 5 to 7 a. m. 
Pilate having examined Jesus, and having further sent him to 
Herod Antipas, who merely mocks and insults him on his 
silence to the accusations preferred against him — openly declares 
his innocence of the crimes charged by the Jewish priests and 
rulers, and endeavours vainly to gain their consent to his release. 
At length he yields to their malice, and that of the multitude 
whom they had gained to reject and denounce their now prostrate 
King : releases to them Barabbas instead of Jesus, whom he 
condemns, in compliance with their desire, to be crucified. 

XII. Good- Friday — -from 8 a. m. to 3 p. m. Jesus having 
been led with two malefactors who were tried and condemned 
after him, to mount Calvary on the north-west of the city — 
and having exhorted the women who lamented him on the 
way, to mourn rather for the calamities impending on themselves 
and their city, is nailed to the cross at 9 a. m. This barbarous 
and ignominious mode of execution is minutely described at the 
commencement of the chapter : and the relation of the accumu- 
lated indignities which our Lord and Saviour there underwent, 
is followed by the lengthened quotation of Psalm xxii. in 
which they are minutely foretold. The preternatural darkness 
from noon for the three hours following, the committal of the 
blessed Virgin Mother to the care of St. John, the supreme suf- 
ferings that prompted the last complaint from the cross, with 



Ixxviii 



Canto XIII. 


Matt. 


Mark. 


Luke. 


John. 


* 
Arya-deha-nikha- 










tarpanam. 










[Interment of the Sacred 
Body.] 


XXVII.57— 
61. 


XV. 42- 

47. 


XXIII. 

50—55. 


XIX. 31 — 

42. 


Canto XIV. 










Parama-visrdmas. 










[The most excellent Sab- 
bath or Rest.] 


XXVII 62 








66. 









the other circumstances of the Saviour's death are then related, 
with the prodigies that followed, and the centurion's exclama- 
tion that " truly this was the Son of God." 

XIII. Good- Friday concluded— from 3 p. m. After a de- 
claration of the glory of the Cross of Christ, and the ground of 
its perpetual veneration by the faithful, the causes are related 
which exempted his most sacred body from the usual fate of 
those who had endured that ignominious punishment : viz. the 
request of the chief priests that the corpses might not be left to 
defile the approaching Paschal Sabbath, — and (after Pilate had 
consented — and the death of the Saviour had preserved him 
from having his legs broken on the cross with the malefactors, 
the effusion of blood and water from the soldier's spear certifying 
the reality of the death whose mysterious virtue it signified,) — 
the further request of the rich counsellor that the corpse might 
be delivered to him for burial, as Isaiah had remarkably 
foretold. The funeral is then related, in which Joseph of Ari- 
mathea is joined by Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and Mary 
the wife of Cleopas watching over the grave till night, while 
Joanna and other women hasten before the sunset that ushered 
in the Sabbath to procure spices for anointing the body on the 
Sunday morn. 

XIV. Holy Saturday, or Easter Eve. The repose of this 
high Sabbath is broken only by the chief priests and Pharisees 
requesting Pilate to make sure the body of Jesus, and having 



Ixxix 



Canto XV. 

Tamo-bala-paraja- 

yas, 

[Defeat of the power of 
darkness 1 




Murk. 



XVI. 1—11. 



Luke. 



XXIV. 1— 
12. 



John. 



XX. I— 18. 



obtained his sanction, setting a watch and a seal on the sepul- 
chre. The irapotency of these united efforts is then declared 
by the teacher quoting Psalm ii. entire, in which David 
announces their unsuccessful attacks upon God's anointed King : 
and the close of Psalm xvi. is also cited, with reference both 
to the exemption of his sacred body from corruption and the 
rest of his soul also in Hades, where he abode with the penitent 
thief, and where he announced to the souls in safe keeping the 
tidings of their completed redemption. 

XV. Easter Sunday : morning. After a salutation to the 
blessed morn which removed the curse of death from mortality 
and completed the conquest of the Redeemer, — the teacher 
relates the early visit of the two Maries with Salome to see 
the sepulchre before the expected anointing, when Mary Magda- 
lene hurries back to announce to the apostles the disappearance 
of the stone from the tomb — and the two other women having 
watched a while without at length enter the court and hear 
from the angel who had displaced the stone and now sat upon 
it, the news that Christ was risen — which they hasten with 
fear and joy to communicate. The coming of Peter and John 
unseen by them or passed in haste, is then told : their entrance 
into the sepulchre, and finding the clothes without the body : and 
after they had returned, the arrival of their first informant Mary 
Magdalene — her vision of two angels — and then of the Lord 
himself: and afterwards, on her rejoining her two companions, 
the appearance of Jesus to them all. The representation of the 
terrified soldiers to the chief priests, and their instructions from 
them, are then told : and the incompatibility of such a story, as 



Ixxx 



Canto XVI. 

Mrityunjaya-pradar- 

sanam. 

[ Manifestation of the Con- 
queror of death.] 

Canto XVII. 

Sat-pratyaya-pra- 

sansa. 

[Praise of excellent faith.] 




Mark. 



XVI. 12, 13. 



XVI. 13. 14. 




John. 



XX. 19— 23. 



XX.24-29. 



well as of the confessed facts of the case, with any other suppo- 
sition than that of the truth of the resurrection is briefly pointed 
out. Then is related the approach of the great body of the wo- 
men with Joanna, from the different direction of Herod's palace 
with ointments for the sacred body, just after Mary Magdalene's 
departure : when they are told by the same angels not to seek the 
living among the dead, but hasten to communicate this angelic 
vision and message to the disciples : who, notwithstanding their 
reiterated testimonies, remain stupified and incredulous. Peter, 
returning to the tomb, sees but what he saw before, but neither 
the angels nor the Lord. 

XVI. Easter Sunday : Afternoon. The Lord graciously ap- 
pears to Simon Peter ; and also to two disciples, who had not 
heard the last appearance, but were discussing the reports of the 
women on a walk from Jerusalem to the country. They return 
in the evening with haste, after Christ had made himself known 
to them at Emmaus, and find ten of the apostles there as- 
sembled already fully convinced of the truth of the resurrec- 
tion. Then Jesus himself suddenly appears in the midst of 
them, convinces them of his corporeal presence, and delivers the 
apostolical commission. 

XVII. Easter week, and the Sunday following. Thomas, 
who alone of the apostles had not seen the Lord, refuses to 
believe that he was corporeally risen— until the Lord himself, 



Ixxxi 



Matt. 

XXVIII. 16, 

17, 18. 



Canto XVIII. 

Nilya -pd/aka-ava- 

bhdsanam. 

[Appearance of the Eter- 
nal Shepherd.] 

Canto XIX. 

Sv&rga- drohanam. 

[The Ascension into Hea-ll^ ,!' 



I (Jor. 
XV. 6. 



XXV II I. 



Mark. 



XVI. 15- 

20 



Luke. 



XXV 1.44- 
53. 

and 
Acts 1. 



John. 



XX. 30,31. 

and 

XXI. 



on the octave of his resurrection, gives him this assurance : 
upbraids the hardness of heart in all, which had led them to 
discredit all who had seen him before themselves, and declares 
the blessedness of those who believe without the testimony of 
external sense. 

XVIII. Second, third, and fourth weeks after Easter. The 
apostles proceed to Galilee to meet Jesus at the time and place 
which he had appointed them : there he is seen by them and 
others, about 500 in all. After this he again appears in Galilee 
to Peter, James, John, Thomas, Nathaniel, and two others as 
they were fishing in the lake of Gennesareth, repeating the mi- 
racle of the miraculous draft ; — and after thrice proposing the 
question to St. Peter whether he loved Him, and charging him 
to feed His flock, makes the assurance respecting St. John, 
the recorder of these events, which makes the rest imagine 
that that apostle should survive till His second coming. 

XIX. Ascension Day, with the ten days preceding and fol- 
lowing (until Pentecost). The apostles having returned to 
Jerusalem — our Lord, who had before appeared separately to St. 
James, appears to the whole of them on the 6th Thrusday after 
Easter, the fortieth day from his resurrection ; — when having 
rectified their conceptions of the nature of his kingdom, and the 
prophecies concerning him, he charges them to remain in Jeru- 
salem till they receive power from on high to be his heralds 
to mankind. Then having led them out to Bethany, and 
repeated his especial charge and blessing he ascends to heaven 



Ixxxu 



Canto XX. 

Sad- at ma- Sdsita- 

mandali-prabandhas. 

[History of the Church 
ruled by the Holy Spirit.] 



Matt. 



XXVIII. 20. 




Acts&c.&c. 



John. 



in their sight : after which they return to the holy city, and employ 
the interval till they should receive the promised blessing in 
prayer and praise to God, — having also in the same interval elect- 
ed a successor to the traitor Judas in their own sacred College. 

XX. Having heard the conclusion of the evangelical history, 
the disciple wishes to hear yet further from the teacher, res- 
pecting the collation of that celestial power, and the fulfilment 
by that mysterious means of Christ's promise of presence with 
his Church to the end of the world. — The teacher describes 
accordingly, but very compendiously, the great events of the 
first Christian Pentecost, the 7th Sunday that followed the 
resurrection, and the wonderful success that followed even amidst 
that obdurate generation. He then pursues, but still more brief- 
ly, the chief of the other events of the acts of the apostles, — 
the stoning of the first martyr St. Stephen — the extension of 
the Gospel to the Jews of the dispersion that followed that event 
— the first baptism of Gentiles by St. Peter, and the conversion 
of him who was to be their great apostle : he then speaks of the 
hostility of the Jews as passing to the Gentiles, when the 
incompatibility of Christianity with idolatry was perceived — 
and the eventual martyrdom of all the apostles, excepting St. 
John, amongst whom he notices the reported preaching of 
St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew in India. The destruction 
of Jerusalem, agreeably to our Lord's prediction, is then told ; — 
and the letting out of the vineyard of those wicked husband- 
men to others, — in reference to which the constitution of 
the Christian Church, as founded and left by the apostles, is 
made known to the disciples. The first trial of the Church 
by persecution having been told, which ceased, except in the 



Ixxxiii 



Canto XXI. 

Sarvasaktiman- 

Moktri- stotram 

[ Hymn of praise to the 
Almighty Saviour.] 




John. 



Persian empire, by the conversion of Constantine, — and also the 
vain attempt of the only remaining idolatrous emperor Julian 
to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem — which Divine power 
signally frustrated — the teacher relates the more dangerous 
trials of Christians that followed, — and the events which fol- 
lowed partly in judgment on their past oppressors, and partly 
on their own neglect and abuse of the privileges intrusted 
to them : the breaking up of the old Roman state by the bar- 
barians (the Western Sacce) from the North, from whence the 
present empires of Europe take their rise, — -and the desolation 
of a great part of Eastern Christendom by the adherents of the 
false prophet Mohammed ; who eight centuries after, succeed in 
subjugating even the principal seat of the Eastern empire of the 
Romans. lie still however states that the promise of Christ 
is secure to His Catholic Church — and that however assailed 
or even diminished in its parts, the apostolical succession of 
ministries should never cease, and the gates of error and of 
death never be suffered to close upon her. 

The scholar here desires to be admitted into this holy Church 
by baptism : and the teacher as a presbyter of the Church, 
under his bishop, promises to do so. He then acquaints him 
with the canonical books of the New Testament, which the 
Church receives as of Divine and infallible authority, for de- 
termining all controversies of faith, from the four Gospels to 
the Revelation of St. John. 

XXI. He then closes with a translation into varied lyric 
measure, of the ancient Christian Hymn Te Deum Laudmnus. 
And thus ends the 4th, and last, part of the Christa Sangita. 















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